


Klepsmnemon

by JohnAmendAll



Series: Holiday Jobs [5]
Category: Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: F/M, Heroine Big Bang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-07
Updated: 2015-06-07
Packaged: 2018-04-03 09:39:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 36,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4096108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JohnAmendAll/pseuds/JohnAmendAll
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zoë and Lily travel to Scotland to help track down a stolen alien fossil. But there are other mysteries in Balcrynie than the one they've come to investigate. What is the truth behind the centuries-old tales of witchcraft? And why is Zoe so insistent on finding it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Your Mission, Should You Choose To Accept It

**Author's Note:**

> Balcrynie, Heriotside, their surroundings, and their history of witchcraft, are all from John Buchan's story, "The Outgoing of the Tide". No reference to real locations is intended.
> 
> * * *
> 
> Written for the [Heroine Big Bang, round three.](http://heroinebigbang.livejournal.com)
> 
> My thanks to [stormbrite](http://stormbrite.livejournal.com), whose beautiful art for this fic can be found [here](http://stormbrite.livejournal.com/5415.html).

> _Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it._
> 
> —G. K. Chesterton,  The Man Who Was Thursday

"I always like this bit," Zoë said, as we climbed into the T-Mat booth. 

"Why?" I asked. 

"Because I haven't got a clue where we're going." As she spoke, she was typing in the destination code we'd been given. "You just step into a box, and you could end up anywhere in the world." 

I could see her point, but I found it worrying. She'd been given the coordinates by UNISYC, after all, and I never knew quite where I was with them. There was nothing to stop them sending us on a one-way trip to the bottom of a coal mine. I'd heard the stories, however exaggerated they must have been. But I'd known Zoë long enough that I was used to the way she enjoyed, once in a while, flirting with risk. 

When Zoë had got in touch with me and asked if I could take a week off work, it could have been for one of two reasons. Either she'd discovered some new sport she wanted to try — or UNISYC had conscripted her for another covert mission. Either way, she liked it if she had someone along to watch her back, and I'd become her go-to person for both activities. She hadn't actually confirmed it was UNISYC until we'd met up at the T-Mat terminal, but I'd had a nasty suspicion they'd be involved. If she'd only wanted me for something like cross-country gravscooter racing, she wouldn't have been anything like as cagey. 

A few seconds later, the booth had done its stuff. I relaxed slightly; we hadn't been dumped in a coal mine or in front of a firing squad. We'd arrived in a hemispherical dome, perhaps eight metres across, made of what looked like khaki-coloured plastic. The space seemed to be divided into different functions: across the dome from us there were three desks, with soldiers sitting at two of them. On our right there was a stack of crates, olive-drab and chunky, with stencilled markings. The view to our left was blocked by some kind of lightweight partition. 

As well as the two soldiers at the desks, there were two more standing on guard just outside the T-Mat we'd arrived in. They'd obviously been expecting us; one opened the booth, ushered us out, and checked our fingerprints, retinal scans and identity implants. Then, before either of us could ask any questions, he led us out of the dome. 

We seemed to be in the middle of a minor military encampment. There were several domes of the same sort we'd just come out of. Their outer surfaces were covered with shifting green-brown patterns that refused to come into focus no matter how much I squinted. In the gaps between the domes, I could see flattish ground stretching away, and in one direction the dull gleam of water. The sky was a solid roof of grey cloud, and a cool, fresh wind was blowing our hair about. 

There was a trim, grey-haired officer waiting for us at the entrance to another one of the domes. He was wearing a dark green uniform; I couldn't place the insignia on his shoulders, but he was obviously someone of importance. Our guide came to a halt and gave him a salute, which he returned crisply. 

"Good morning, Dr Heriot," he said. "Ms Carson, I don't believe we've met before. Colonel Richard Stanley." 

I shook hands with him, wondering what he wanted with us. From his attitude, I gathered that he'd had dealings with Zoë before — presumably he was the person, or one of them, who'd sent her out to risk life and limb tracking down murderers and prehistoric serpent-people and who knew what else. I glanced across at her, to see how she was reacting, but she seemed to be in something of a daze. 

"Sorry if I'm being stupid," I said. "But could you tell us where we are?" 

He shook his head. "It's a fair question. This is the Skerburnfoot, in the Alba Subzone." 

"Skerburnfoot," Zoë repeated, almost to herself. "Scotland." She shook her head. "Sorry, I was wool-gathering. What can we do for you, Colonel?" 

"Let me take you to my office, and I'll show you. Give your luggage to Weston here." 

We handed our bags to the soldier who'd been our previous guide, and followed the Colonel into another dome. This one was smaller, and laid out as an office. The Colonel took a seat behind the table which seemed to be the principal piece of furniture, with the two of us sitting opposite him. 

"Here's the story," he said. "Back in April, an archaeological dig was taking place on the outskirts of Balcrynie, not far from here as the crow flies. Among the artefacts they discovered was a meteorite." 

An image appeared on the surface of the table. It showed a grassy field, not very different from the one we'd glimpsed between the domes. Trenches had been cut into its surface here and there, with neat heaps of spoil beside them. Coloured rods presumably marked the positions of artefacts or features of interest. 

The Colonel tapped the table, and the image was replaced by another. This was a close-up of one of the trenches. Lying at the bottom of the trench, with the soil dug away from it, was a lump of rock, with a half-melted look to it. It didn't look very interesting to me, but then I'm not an archaeologist. 

The next picture showed the rock, still in its place, split open. The exposed surface was paler than the outside, but with a dark pattern visible on it. 

Zoë leaned closer. "Is that a fossil?" 

"Correct." The Colonel increased the magnification. "I'm told that it's a wing, but not of any known terrestrial bird. In structure it's closer to the bat's wing, but you can see the outline of feathers here." 

"You mean it's alien?" I said. 

"That was the conclusion the archaeologists reached. The find was reported under the Skyfall regulations, and two operatives were sent to retrieve it. They arrived at the site late that evening, took possession of the meteorite, and left not long before midnight. When they arrived at their destination, it was discovered that the specimen had been tampered with." 

Zoë looked almost offended at the thought. "How?" 

"A section of the meteorite had been removed, and replaced with a synthmatter facsimile. It would have passed a visual inspection, but not any more serious scrutiny." 

"So, some time between the thing being dug up, and the operatives delivering it, it was got at?" Zoë said. 

"Precisely. And since there was no sign of external intrusion, that suggests an inside job. Since then, there have been a number of similar crimes in the area, mostly thefts of money or valuables. They all share the same characteristic: the crimes cannot have been committed without inside help. 

"For example, in July a United Jewels outlet was burgled. The security system failed to register any intrusion; at first it was thought to be a fault, but detailed investigation proved that it had been sabotaged, by somebody familiar with that particular installation. The only people with the knowledge and opportunity were the manager and the two cashiers who had been on duty that day. All were of excellent character — which was subsequently confirmed by parapsychic screening — and there was no evidence linking any of them to the crime. 

"A week later, a drum of synthmatter feedstock was stolen from the local fabricarium. Again, the only possible suspects were those who had been working at the fabricarium that day. As with the jewellery outlet, no case could be made out against any of them, nor could any connection be proved with the earlier crime. The investigation petered out for lack of evidence. There are several more incidents in the dossier, but they're all similar in outline." 

"Isn't this a matter for the police?" I asked. 

"They're investigating, of course. Our interest is in recovering the first item stolen — the fossil." 

"You said 'a section' of the meteorite had been removed," Zoë said. "That included the fossil, then?" 

"Part of the fossil: its head, and one of the wings. Our investigators theorise that the thieves didn't have enough time to remove the rest and manufacture a suitable substitute." 

"I see." Zoë sounded as if she was turning over a fresh page of a mental notebook. "Why are Lily and I here?" 

"Soldiers and police are, unfortunately, conspicuous. We propose that you should pay a visit to the neighbourhood in the character of tourists, and see what information you can pick up. Except for emergencies, communication with us will be limited to encrypted longtext, keyed to the companel at your quarters." 

We nodded. 

"I always ask this," Zoë said. "And you never give me a straight answer, but I'm going to ask anyway. Why send me? What have I got that your people haven't?" 

The Colonel smiled. "Your face."


	2. When Fond Recollection Presents Them To View

> _I have this terrible feeling of déjà-vu._
> 
> — Monty Python's Flying Circus

Among the vehicles parked at UNISYC's base was a short-range hopper, of civilian design. It was a cheerful red colour that looked as if it could be seen for miles, which probably accounted for why UNISYC had kept it under an active-camouflage tarpaulin. Two soldiers were pulling the tarpaulin off as we walked up; as they rolled it up, one of them mentioned that our bags were already on board. 

"Could you drive?" Zoë asked me. "I want to read the dossier the Colonel gave us." 

"Of course." I took the driver's position, strapped myself in, waited until Zoë had done the same, and went through the launch sequence. Less than a minute later, we were rising into the air, the countryside below us spreading out below us like a map. 

"Don't take us straight in from this direction," Zoë said, not looking up from her 3D-viewer. "Fly around a bit first." 

I did so, setting the flyer's nose away from the sea and toward the mountains. Behind us, the military base quickly faded, its camouflaged domes disappearing as if invisible. The scanner screen showed no other transponder codes: we had the sky to ourselves. 

"Is there anywhere in particular—" I began, but stopped; it was obvious Zoë didn't want to be interrupted. I brought us lower, with some idea of dropping below effective sensor range. Except that as far as I knew, there weren't any sensors to avoid. 

Gleaning what I could from the navcomp, I flew an aimless sort of course, keeping a more or less constant distance from the coast, and remaining low. I tried to think like a tourist, wanting to look at the quaint beauties of nature. Maybe it was because of my nerves, but I couldn't see much beauty in it. It was all just grass and rocks. 

After we'd been flying for about a quarter of an hour, Zoë closed her viewer, and looked out of the window for the first time. We were flying over a bare, wild-looking glen, its sides purple with heather. A few white dots at the feet of the slopes were most likely grazing sheep. At one point, what looked like a ruined cottage protruded from a clump of spindly trees, but that was the only sign that humans had touched this landscape. 

"You're flying quite low," she said. 

"I think that's what tourists would do," I said. "And... well, I don't know if anyone's tracking us, but it might help throw them off." 

"Unless they've hacked our transponder." Zoë looked down. "Can we land for a bit?" 

"I'll try. Are you feeling airsick?" 

"No, but I think I need to stretch my legs. Can you put us down by that path?" 

Landing without a prepared surface is never particularly easy, but the hopper's navcomp was designed to cope with the situation: it picked out a flattish patch of ground near the path, and plotted a suitable approach path. As the hopper coasted over the heather, it pulsed its antigravs once, then dropped the last few centimetres and rolled to a halt with no more than a gentle bump. We both climbed out, made our way through the vegetation to the path, and looked around. 

"We'd better keep away from that green bit," Zoë said. "It looks like a bog, and I don't want to get stuck in it again." She blinked, and hastily corrected herself. "I don't want to get stuck in it. Why did I say 'again'? I've never been here before." 

She put her hands to her temples. 

"Are you OK?" I asked. 

Zoë shook her head. "Déjà-vu." 

"You think you _have_ been here before?" 

"Exactly. And I know I haven't. At least..." 

I shot a glance across at her. Her expression was one I'd seen before — it was the one she had every time the topic of her nightmares came up. 

"One of the areas on the map was marked Heriotside," she said. "And there's a river called the Heriot Water. Maybe that's where my surname comes from. Perhaps my ancestors lived here once — it would have to be hundreds of years ago, before there were proper records." 

"You think it's some kind of race memory?" 

"What else could it be? Unless you want to dredge up that nonsense about reincarnation and second sight." 

I shook my head. "Not if it bothers you." 

I found myself wondering whether Zoë did have some sort of special connection to this part of the world. It would be just like UNISYC to pick up on something like that and exploit it. 

"Well, we can't spend all day wool-gathering," Zoë said briskly. She began to walk along the path, heading uphill. "Do you want to know what was in those files?" 

"Do you have to tell me now?" 

"It's as good a place as any, isn't it? And it's hardly likely there'll be anyone eavesdropping." Zoë briefly looked back at the hopper, bright and incongruous against the heather. "Let's take the jeweller's shop as an example. On July the nineteenth the manager noticed that several rings, with a total value of two thousand eight hundred and nineteen credits, were missing from a display cabinet. He called in the PSA at once, of course." 

"PSA?" 

Zoë gave me an impatient look. "The police. They went through the security logs. The cabinet has a lock that records every time it was opened, and who did it. The last recorded access was the previous afternoon, when one was removed for a potential customer to try on. The customer decided not to buy it, so it was returned to the cabinet. No further accesses were recorded until the manager came in the next day and found the rings missing. 

"The cabinet lock hadn't been forced, but it didn't record being opened again. Obviously that's not supposed to happen — there's no point to something like that if it isn't tamperproof. But it's an old design, and there are ways to bypass it if you know where to look. The obvious conclusion is that someone did look, and then used that knowledge." 

I nodded. "And it must have been somebody who could get at the cabinet in the first place." 

"Exactly — and make sure none of the other security monitors picked them up. That narrowed it down to the manager and the cashiers. But there wasn't any evidence against any of them. The cabinet had fingerprints from all of them, which you'd expect." 

"Were the rings traced?" 

Zoë shook her head. "They were put on the usual alert lists, but so far no-one's seen any sign of them. They could be anywhere in the Solar System by now." She spread her hands. "The outline of events is similar with the other thefts. Security systems bypassed or disabled by someone who knew them well. And not much of a connection between any of them." 

"What do you mean, 'not much'?" 

"There's some kind of connection to Balcrynie. Four thefts were from shops in the village, and in a couple of other cases one of the suspects had visited there recently." 

"It does sound like there's a gang somewhere round here, doesn't it?" I said. 

"It does," Zoë said. "But — a gang! It sounds terribly old-fashioned. It'll be a highwayman holding up carriages next." 

"What about what was stolen? Is there any pattern there?" 

"Not really. After the presumed alien relic, it's all been reasonably portable objects. Nothing bigger than a single person could carry. Some of them valuable, some of them... well, trinkets." 

"And that's all the information we've got to go on?" 

"No, there was a lot more, but I only told you the useful bits." 

I shrugged. "Then I don't see what we're supposed to do." 

"Neither do I. But I think there's got to be more to this than what there is in the files." 

We walked on for a little while in silence. 

"What about aliens?" I suggested. "The first thing stolen — the skull — that was supposed to be of alien origin. Couldn't it have been more aliens who wanted to take it back?" 

"I could believe that if it was just the skull," Zoë said. "But I don't see what aliens would want with all the other stuff that's been stolen. It... well, it doesn't _feel_ like an alien sort of thing to me." She made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh. "My counsellor always says I need to trust my instincts more. That was me doing it." 

"So where does that leave us?" 

Zoë waved a hand. "In the middle of nowhere without a map. We've got a lot of crimes that are logically being committed by the same person, except it's a different set of suspects each time. The first thing they steal is a fantastically rare—" 

She broke off, sharply. 

All the time we'd been walking up the glen, the path turning this way and that as it climbed uphill. The bend we'd just turned had brought us round a protruding spur of rock, and revealed a new stretch of the valley. Not too far ahead of us was a tower, or rather the ruin of one, jutting out of the ground like a single broken fang. 

"It's old," Zoë murmured. "So old." 

"I suppose it must be," I said. 

"Hundreds and hundreds of years." She screwed her eyes up tight and shook her head. "I was just thinking. In a few centuries maybe that's all that'll be left of the Morgan Tower, or Lowell Spaceport. An empty shell." 

"I suppose in a way it's progress." I gave the tower another look. "If it was made to hold off raiders or something, and now there aren't any raiders to hold off. Isn't that an improvement?" 

Zoë nodded. "Put like that, of course it is. What was I thinking?" 

We resumed our walk. The path went right by the base of the tower, and a ragged hole in the wall served as a doorway. Zoë went in, and I followed her; there was no roof, just the four walls, five or six metres high, surrounding a square of grass. 

"I wonder what it _was_ used for," I said. 

Zoë still looked uncomfortable. "Probably to guard against bandits or sheep rustlers or rival clans. Imagine being out here in winter, cold and shivering and lonely." She visibly pulled herself together. "Where was I? Oh, yes, the fossil. In some ways, that's the simplest of all the thefts. It was in a field storage facility with all the other finds, and the site was guarded by a couple of local security men who didn't know what they were supposed to be guarding. Security through obscurity, you see. They didn't want to have every conspiracy theorist with a metal detector running up here looking for alien technology." 

"So what happened?" 

"As far as anyone could determine, someone waited until the guards were looking the other way, walked in, and swapped the skull for the replica. They would have to have had the keycodes for the main gate and the storage area, plus the combination for the locker itself." 

I thought about this. "But how would they have known what the fossil looked like? You couldn't make a replica without seeing the original." 

"Maybe they'd broken in before to make a scan. Or they'd hacked into the site computer and accessed the scans the archaeologists made." 

"Would they have had the time? I thought it all happened on the same day." 

"The time window's a bit wider: they didn't make the Skyfall report until the meteorite had been dug up and moved to its secure locker. There was definitely enough time for a gang to make the replica and substitute it for the original, if they were well-organised. I wonder if they were already monitoring the dig before the fossil was found." 

"Yes," I said, doubtfully. "Zoë, if we're supposed to be tourists how are we going to investigate any of this? We wouldn't know any of it had happened. If we start asking questions about military compounds and burglar alarms and things, we'll blow our cover at once." 

Zoë shrugged. "You're right: we'll need to be careful not to mention anything we're not supposed to know. Hopefully if we talk to the locals enough they'll get onto the subject by themselves. What are you looking at there, Lily?" 

I'd been idly glancing at the walls of the tower; near the ground, they were rock, as if the basement of the tower had been hacked out of the hillside. Over the years, visitors before us had carved their names into the rock. 

"Nothing important." I pointed at a graffito on the rocky wall. "You're not the first Zoë to come here. Look, she even put the dots on the E." 

"They're not dots, Jamie, they're a diæresis." 

Startled, I swung round. Zoë looked her usual calm, controlled self. 

"Is something the matter?" she asked. 

"You just called me Jamie." 

"Did I?" 

"I'm sure you did." 

Zoë shrugged. "Slip of the mind, I suppose. Or maybe... Look. There." 

She pointed at another carved name on the wall, not too far from the 'Zoë' I'd spotted. 

"There," she said. "'Jamie'. That's where it came from. Stop worrying about my mental state, Lily. I'm fine. And I think we've spent quite enough time here." 

She turned on her heel, and walked out of the tower. I gave the second graffito a worried look. It had eroded almost to nothingness; it might have started with a 'J', but I wouldn't have sworn to any of the other letters. Either Zoë had hastily fastened on it as an excuse to cover up her slip, or— 

I dropped that line of thought and hurried after Zoë back to the hopper. It was about halfway there that I remembered where I'd heard her use the name 'Jamie' before. We'd shared a bedroom several times, and Zoë talks in her sleep. Whoever Jamie was, he or she was a person who haunted her darkest nightmares.


	3. First Impressions

> _But in the times of which I write there were more awful fears than any from the violence of nature._
> 
> — John Buchan,  The Outgoing Of The Tide

Balcrynie, when we finally arrived there, looked like the sort of village where they were unfashionably keen on tradition. At first glance, I got the impression that nothing new had been built there for the last three or four hundred years. When I got a closer look at the houses, I could see that some of them were actually quite new, but deliberately built to mimic the same centuries-old style. Any architect worth his salt would doubtless have called them 'pastiches', and then had to wash his mouth out for using such a filthy word. 

Zoë had memorised the street plan on the flight, and guided me to set the hopper down in a parking area close to the guesthouse where we'd be staying. We checked in, deposited our luggage and freshened up. 

"Right," Zoë said briskly. "We'd better get started." 

"I'm not sure what we ought to do," I said. "If we're supposed to be tourists—" 

Zoë put a finger to her lips, then leaned so close that her lips were almost touching my ear. "Somebody might be listening," she whispered, so quietly that even so I could hardly hear her. 

I looked around the old-fashioned bedroom we were to share. I couldn't see any sign of eavesdropping, but of course someone could have hidden a microphone almost anywhere. Behind one of the pictures on the wall, perhaps, or in a vase of flowers. Even in the ceiling light, an angular glass object which Zoë had said reminded her of a scaled-up influenza virus. Or an eavesdropper could just be standing outside the window and listening. The question was, why would anyone be eavesdropping at all? 

"Well, then," I said. "We should start by looking round the village, I suppose." 

We walked around the village, getting an idea of the layout. At least, I got an idea of the layout; there had obviously been a map in the briefing pack Zoë had read, because she seemed to know exactly where everything was already. I'm sure we'd have got more out of it if either of us had been interested in old-time architecture or shops that sold trinkets and dubious 'antiques', but it certainly wasn't where I'd have chosen to spend a holiday. 

"I don't see what good this is doing us," I said, as we emerged from the churchyard. 

Zoë, who'd been looking up at the church with what I thought was rather an odd expression, turned to face me. "Well, it's early days," she said. 

"I'm getting thirsty. Is there somewhere we can get a drink?" 

"Goody Ricker's cottage is the nearest," Zoë said, without hesitating. 

She led us through the churchyard, a few hundred metres down a road, and brought us to a little cluster of cottages. One of them had an electronic billboard outside, alternating the text GOODY RICKER'S COTTAGE with an image of a stereotypical pointy-hatted witch. Through the cottage windows, we could see what I thought was a particularly kitschy tea room. 

"I suppose she must have been the local witch," I said. "It doesn't look much like a witch's cottage." 

Zoë gave it another one of those odd looks. "Well, it's been built onto. And those buildings either side are more recent. Try picturing it all on its own, out on the edge of the village." 

I tried imagining the cottage as it might have been. "Can't really see it," I said. 

"It doesn't matter. Let's go in and get something to drink." 

As I'd suspected from looking through the window, the interior of the tearoom was all very deliberately quaint and olde-worlde. Everything was in shades of orange and brown, right down to the plates and mugs. 

"Do you have anything on the history of the cottage?" Zoë asked the waiter, after she'd ordered two glasses of the local mineral water. 

"Aye, there's a booklet. You're interested in history and the like?" 

"I think I should try to take an interest while I'm here." 

"Of course." 

He hurried away, and presently returned with the drinks and a booklet, as promised. 

"Thank you," Zoë said, looking up. Her eyes met the waiter's for the first time, and it was clear that Zoë didn't have a monopoly on odd expressions. The man looked as if he'd just seen a ghost. 

"Will... will there be anything else?" he asked. 

"Not for now, thanks," Zoë said politely. She turned back to the booklet, and began to read it, at her usual high speed. 

⁂

"Right," Zoë said. We'd finished in the cafe, and were now standing near the middle of the recreation ground. It certainly wasn't the sort of place you'd expect two tourists to seek out. "I think we're reasonably safe from being overheard here." 

I'd had enough of this obsession with imaginary eavesdroppers. "Why are you so sure someone's trying to spy on us?" 

Zoë glanced nervously around us. "I'm not sure, but better safe than sorry. Anyway, I don't think we've got any significant leads." 

"What about that boy in the tearoom?" I said. 

"What about him?" 

"Didn't you notice the way he looked at you?" 

"He was looking at _you_ most of the time," Zoë replied. "Mind you, you do look pretty good today." 

I couldn't resist tucking an imaginary strand of my hair into place. "Thanks. But isn't that beside the point?" 

"Maybe not. We need to try and work out what's going on in this village, and that means local contacts. If we run into him again, we should try and cultivate him." 

"Boys aren't any good with gossip. And I don't like the way he looked at you. It was— well, as if he _recognised_ you." 

"Hmm." Zoë closed her eyes and put her fingers to her temples. "Well, I'm positive I've never seen him before in my life." 

She sounded so sure that I knew there wasn't any point in arguing. 

"So where do we go next?" I said. 

Zoë shrugged. "That way," she said, pointing seemingly at random. 

We set off. Once we'd left the recreation ground, the path we were following quickly became a narrow track between clumps of stinging nettles, and we had to pick our way carefully. 

"Are you sure?" Zoë asked suddenly. 

"Sure about what?" 

"About that waiter's reaction to seeing me." 

"Positive. I'm surprised you didn't notice." 

Zoë paused to kick a particularly tall nettle aside. "You know what I'm like when it comes to social nuances. I was more interested in that booklet about Goody Ricker." 

"Did it say anything interesting?" 

"Not a lot, but I didn't know that then. I'll give you a précis if you like." Zoë's tone became more formal, as if she was delivering a lecture. "Sarah Ricker lived on her own in that cottage, some time in the seventeenth century — the leaflet doesn't give exact dates. She was said to have a secret cave somewhere where she would cast her spells and call up the Devil, that sort of thing. And she had familiars that looked like animals and found out people's innermost secrets, so no-one dared try and stop her. Except for the local presbyter, Giles McConnell. The story goes that he set out to confront her one Sunday afternoon, and was never seen again. And that's about it." 

"What happened to her in the end?" 

"According to the booklet, she was found dead in the cottage a few years later, with a horrible expression on her face. People said the Devil had finally claimed his own. Probably a stroke, in reality." 

"And that's it?" I asked. 

"That's all the booklet said. When I've got a moment, I think I'll go into the thing in a bit more detail." 

"Why?" 

It was a simple enough question, but it seemed to flummox Zoë completely. She stopped dead, opened her mouth and closed it without saying anything, and finally clenched her fists. 

"Because I want to know the truth," she said finally. "The account in the booklet's full of unanswered questions. They ought to be answered." 

"They aren't the questions we're supposed to be answering." 

"At least they're questions I can _ask_. We need a cover story while we're here, and it might as well be this." She gave me a stern look. "Now, let's get along." 

⁂

By the evening, we weren't any further forward with either the mystery we'd been sent to investigate, or the one Zoë seemed to have adopted as her new pet project. She'd sent a brief, dry report to UNISYC, and made a number of unsuccessful online searches for information regarding the stories surrounding Goody Ricker. 

"It hasn't been digitised," she complained, as we got into our beds. "I've got the occasional citation or mention in an index, but if I want any more I'll have to go to whichever library or museum's got the book." 

"I thought everything had been digitised," I said. 

Zoë shook her head. "No. There's a lot of marginal information out there, that no-one knows about because, like you, they think everything's online already. Most of it's so esoteric that only five or six people would care about it — and of course, there's a lot that's just plain rubbish." For a moment, her expression darkened. "And some of it's dangerous. Good night, Lily. Lights: Off." 

The room darkened in response to her voice. I burrowed under the covers, fighting vague worries about whoever or whatever was responsible for the thefts — and why Zoë didn't seem to be focusing as she ought on tracking them down. 

When I woke up, it was still dark, and Zoë was having one of her nightmares. 

I'd shared a room with Zoë enough times to know it wasn't any good trying to get back to sleep. When she's having a bad dream, she talks; it's like hearing her half of a VoiceLink conversation, except that it's bits and pieces of several different conversations, and even when you can make out the words they don't make any sense. The first couple of times it happened I was quite scared, but I'd more or less got used to it now. Zoë was mainly mumbling, but I caught the words 'impossible' and 'scope of current technology.' 

Then, quite suddenly, she giggled and started reciting a rhyme in a strange, singsong, childish voice. 

> "A hiding place  
>  You'll never find  
>  Goody Ricker  
>  Sees your mind.  
>  Run a mile  
>  Or go to ground  
>  Goody kens  
>  Where you'll be found." 

She went through it several times, with that unnerving little giggle between each repetition. Just as I was beginning to think I couldn't bear listening to it any more, she suddenly switched back to her own voice. 

"I can feel it too," she gasped. "It's inside my head!" 

Her voice rose to a scream on the last word, there was a strange sliding noise, and then a thump as something reasonably heavy hit the floor. 

I'd had enough, and called out "Lights: On." I couldn't help noticing how shaky my own voice sounded. 

The virus-shaped ceiling light snapped on. On the floor between our beds was a bewildered-looking, pyjama-clad Zoë, accompanied by most of her bedding. It didn't take much to deduce that she'd fallen out of bed. 

"Did I wake you?" She pushed a hand through her tangled black hair. "Sorry." 

"Are you hurt at all?" I asked. Zoë's tendency to nightmares was nothing new to me, but I hadn't seen her this bad. 

"No, I'm all right. Just a bit bruised, I think." She pulled herself to her feet and started to remake her bed. "I had the falling dream, that's all." 

"The falling dream?" 

"You know I said I don't usually remember my nightmares? Well, this one's the exception. I'm in a room and it breaks into tiny pieces. There's nothing outside." She was bending over the bed, so I couldn't see her expression. "I mean— _nothing_. Just darkness. And gravity, because I start falling. That's it, more or less. It tends to correspond with periods of stress in my life." 

Her bed now being more or less complete, she climbed into it. 

"Lights: off. This is the first time I've combined it with actually falling out of bed, I think," she added. 

"But wasn't there more?" I asked. "You were reciting a rhyme or something." 

She sounded honestly puzzled. "Was I?" 

"Yes. And your voice didn't sound like you. It was like a little girl's." I realised something else. "And the accent was wrong. It was Alban." 

"You mean I sounded like one of the locals?" 

"Well, similar." 

"Can you remember what I said?" 

I shuddered. "I don't think I'll ever forget it," I said, and repeated the rhyme. 

"Eurgh," was Zoë's first reaction. "I really said that?" 

"Yes." 

"We'll have to research that at some point. See if it's a real rhyme I saw somewhere or something my subconscious came up with." She yawned. "Good night, Lily." 

I tried to get back to sleep, but by then it was no good at all.


	4. Dead End

> _But there is no road through the woods._
> 
> —Rudyard Kipling,  The Way through the Woods

"Business for today," Zoë said. She'd once again insisted on walking to the middle of the recreation ground before she'd so much as mention what we were here for. It was a cold, damp sort of morning, and I was wishing I'd put on something warmer. 

"I suppose..." I began. 

"We still haven't got much of a handle on the thefts," Zoë went on, as if I hadn't spoken. "But we've got no official standing — we're not even supposed to know about them. I think we'll just have to wander round and get to know people." Her tone suggested she'd have been more comfortable with the idea of jumping into shark-infested water. 

"Shouldn't we take a look at where the artefact was stolen?" I asked. 

"I don't think there'll be a lot to see. Now the dig's finished it'll all have been cleared away. But you're right, we shouldn't overlook it. Now, regarding Goody Ricker, we should start by visiting those shops selling witchy stuff." She said the last two words as if she was holding them at arm's length, in gloved hands. 

I thought it was time I made a stand. "Zoë, I don't know why this witch thing has caught your imagination, but we can't let it take priority over what we're here for." 

Zoë scowled. "I know. But it's nagging at me now. I want to know the rest of her story. Maybe I read something about her when I was cataloguing... well, it doesn't matter. Let's go and look at the dig site." 

She set off walking and, with her usual confidence in her navigational skills, led us through three or four back streets, down a cul-de-sac, and came to a halt before the closed gates of a builder's yard. 

"Oh," she said. 

I looked around. "Are we lost?" 

"No." Zoë scratched her head. "I know exactly where we are. I'm just not sure why we came this way. The main street's over there." She pointed in the direction of the yard. 

"Was the map out of date?" I asked. 

"No. I suppose if the yard was open we might have been able to cut through it and get to the main street that way, but we'd only have saved a minute or two." 

"So we should have taken the next left?" 

"That's it." Zoë gave the yard gates a dirty look, as if it was entirely their fault for being there, turned on her heel, and began to retrace her footsteps. 

About a quarter of an hour later, we were out of the village proper and leaning on the gate of the field where the dig had taken place. As Zoë had predicted, the temporary domes we'd seen pictures of in our briefing had long since been removed. There were a few areas where the grass looked disturbed, which might have been the locations of trenches or perhaps where vehicles had driven in and out, but that was it. 

"You were right," I said, as we leant on the gate. "There isn't anything to see here." 

Zoë nodded. "Just the lie of the land. Look how close we are to the river." 

"Would that make much of a difference?" I asked. "Surely the difficult bit would be getting at the storage locker. It wouldn't matter whether you came by the road or the river, or air for that matter." 

"Not air," Zoë said. "You might miss someone on foot or even in a dinghy, but I don't see how you could land an aircraft here without anyone noticing." She turned slowly in a circle. "Can you wait there a moment? I want to get my bearings." 

She clambered over the gate and walked into the field, stopping from time to time and looking this way and that. I couldn't see any sign of her using a navcomp, or even a map or compass, so it was anybody's guess what bearings she was taking. 

"And that's that," she said after a while, and returned to the gate, pausing only to wipe her boots on a tuft of grass. "I don't think this gets us very far." 

"You mean I've wasted our time," I said. 

"No, I don't, or I'd have said that." 

As we walked back to the village, a thought crossed my mind. "Why did they decide to do a dig there in the first place?" 

"That wasn't in the dossier. Memo to self: look into that point." 

I'm not sure what Zoë's plans were for when we got back to the village, because on the way back we bumped into the young man who'd been our waiter the previous day. He was wearing a sporty jumpsuit — black, with green lighting bolts — that made the most of his good looks. 

"Hey," he said. "I hoped I'd see you round. I just wanted to apologise properly for the way I behaved yesterday." 

"Oh," Zoë said. "Thank you." 

"That's very kind of you," I added. "Hi. I'm Lily and this is Zoë." 

"I'm Keith." He shook our hands. "You're visitors here, aren't you?" 

"Yes. This is our first time here." 

"Not the last, I hope," he said, locking eyes with me. 

"Certainly not if everyone's as friendly as you are." I could feel myself blushing. 

"Kind of you to say so. Is there anything I can do to help you?" 

"I was very interested in that booklet about Goody Ricker," Zoë said. "I'm looking for more information about her. Do you have any idea where I could find it?" 

"There are one or two shops you could try," he said. There was a guardedness in his voice that I hadn't noticed when he'd been speaking to me. "You're interested in the occult and so on, then?" 

"To a degree." 

"Aye, I suppose you would," he said, sounding more as if he was thinking out loud. "There's The Goddess's Bower, that's on the main street. This way." 

He held out his hand. More or less without thinking, I took it. 

⁂

The Goddess's Bower looked as if it belonged about eighty years in the past — all crystals and mirrors and pot-pourri, and nothing technological to be seen. Keith had stopped at the doorway, as if he didn't want to cross the threshold. 

"Look, I've got to get to work now," he said. "But maybe we can meet later?" 

"I'd like that," I said. 

"How about half-past seven at the _Leaping Fish_ , then?" 

"Fine. I'll see you then." 

"See you," he said, and hurried off in the direction of Goody Ricker's cottage. 

I realised Zoë had already gone in, followed her, and found her in conversation with a plump, sulky-looking girl, who was dressed as if she'd just stepped out of a costume drama. She even had a lace cap rammed onto her dark, untidy hair. 

"Sorry," she was saying. "I'm new here, really. I suppose there might be a list on the computer, but no-one's shown me—" 

"I could have a look," Zoë said eagerly. 

The sulky girl didn't seem too pleased by the idea. "I can't do that. You might break something." 

"Well, if I come back later, will someone be able to do the lookup then?" 

"Yeah. Maybe round about two-ish?" 

"Thank you." Zoë seemed to notice that I was hovering, and turned to me. "We'll come back then. Come along, Lily." 

She swept out of the shop, nearly overturning a display of dowsing rods. 

"That was a complete waste of time," she said. "I asked about occult books, and she couldn't tell me anything. Her limit seems to be taking money for those smelly nightlights." She gave me a self-deprecating look. "Don't tell me, I shouldn't be so impatient with people who don't have my advantages. What's happened to Keith?" 

"He had to go to work," I said. "Zoë, before he went, he asked me out." 

"So far, so good. Just remember to pump him for information while he's sweet-talking you. And if you can't be good, at least take reasonable precautions." 

"Of course. But I don't see why you're the only one who's allowed to have romances on holiday." 

Zoë lowered her voice. "This isn't just a holiday, remember." 

"Says the girl who keeps ignoring her investigation to research some centuries-old witch." 

"Touché. Let's try the other shop. 'Balcrynie Eclectic Books.'" 

Balcrynie's small enough that nowhere's too far away from anywhere else, and it only took us five minutes to reach the bookshop. It was the sort of place you wouldn't notice unless you were looking out for it, at the far end of an alley. A flight of stone steps ran up one of the alley walls to a door at first-floor level; a peeling notice board at the bottom of the steps was the only clue about what was at the top. 

Once we climbed the steps, we found ourselves in a dimly-lit, dusty room. It was probably lined with bookcases, but you couldn't really see them for all the heaps of books that covered every available surface. In the middle of the room was a big, clumsy table that, again, had stacks of books on top and more stacks underneath, leaving enough space for one person at a time to get round the edge of the room. The proprietor was an elderly, bearded man who didn't seem particularly eager to see customers. When Zoë explained what she was looking for, he gave her a very nasty look. 

"There's not a lot from that time," he said. "You'd do well to look for Nicholas Welford's _Reminiscences_. He was the minister after Giles McConnell." 

"He was the one who found Goody Ricker dead?" 

"That was Welford, aye. It's said he ordered her cottage emptied and everything in it burned." 

"You haven't got a copy of the _Reminiscences_ , I suppose?" 

"No, lass. It's the Zonal Archives you'd need for something like that." 

"Thanks: I'll try them." Zoë looked around the heaps of books. "Do you have anything else that might cover Goody Ricker?" 

"Not from the time. She's mentioned in later books." He got to his feet, and pulled a volume from one of the precarious stacks. "Encyclopædia of Witchcraft, third edition. Genuine Twentieth Century." 

"Might I take a look?" Zoë asked. 

"If you're careful." 

Zoë delicately turned the yellowed pages. 

"Here she is, Lily," she said. 

I looked at the page. The entry was short, giving no more than the details Zoë had already discovered, with a list of cross-references at the bottom in block capitals. There was a picture beside it, showing a woman dressed in black with a pointed hat. In one hand she held a broomstick, in the other a skull. On the ground before her a fire was burning, at the centre of a complex alchemical diagram. 

"The picture's pretty much meaningless," Zoë said. "It's just some piece of fancy from centuries later." 

"D'you want it or not?" the shopkeeper asked impatiently. 

"I don't think so, thank you." Zoë carefully closed the book, and handed it back. "Thank you for your time." 

We walked down the stairs and out of the alley. 

"That bookshop looked like he kept all his books in the attic," I said. "And then one day the ceiling gave way, and all the books fell into the shop. And that's where they've been, ever since." 

"I think it's worse than that," Zoë said. "I think that hatch in the ceiling is a portal to a dimension full of nonsensical occult books. They keep dropping into the shop, and he has to sell them before the place gets completely filled up." 

I laughed. "Maybe he should try being nicer to his customers, then. Or he'll go in there one day and find he can't move for grimoires." 

"And probably quite soon." 

"Where are we going, anyway?" I asked. 

"Back to our lodgings. I'm going to see if I can book a visit to the Zonal Archives. And then draw a Pearson diagram or two." 

"Oh." 

Zoë narrowed her eyes. "When you say 'Oh' like that, you mean 'That's terrible.' Why shouldn't I use Pearson diagrams?" 

"Usually you say they're a blunt instrument and the last resort, and the refuge of someone who can't find an elegant solution. If we've been here less than twenty-four hours and you're already drawing Pearson diagrams, that means you're stumped." 

"Lily," Zoë said reproachfully, "don't be such a pessimist."


	5. Love's Young Dream

> _Love is ane fervent fire._
> 
> —Alexander Scott,  A Rondel of Love

"It doesn't make _sense_ ," Zoë said, scowling at the glowing wireframe diagram on the screen in front of her. 

"How do you mean?" I asked. 

"Well, there's not enough information to come to a conclusion, but I wasn't expecting that. But usually you can see where you need to add more evidence, thin out the possibilities, spot the patterns. There aren't really any patterns. Except for the obvious one." She highlighted a cluster of dotted lines. "Balcrynie. Whatever's going on, it's going on here." 

I patted her shoulder. "It's early days yet." 

"True enough. But I don't see how we get beyond early days. At least, not with just the two of us. I can think of several techniques I could use if I had the sort of resources the police do." 

"Or you-know-who," I said. It was how we referred to the Colonel and his organisation, between ourselves. 

"Yes." Zoë's hands darted over the computer's touchpad, and a few of the lines on her diagram winked out. "If they really want that skull back there are all sorts of things they could do. So there's no point in us trying to do things they can do better." 

"So what _do_ we do?" 

Zoë swept her hand across the touchpad; the display went blank. "I'm going to the Goddess's Bower again," she said. "Coming?" 

⁂

This time, when we got to the Goddess's Bower, there was a bony, middle-aged woman on duty, wearing a similar sort of costume to the girl we'd seen earlier. 

"Hello," Zoë said brightly. "Do you have anything about the history of witchcraft in these parts? I'm particularly interested in the story of Goody Ricker." 

The woman tapped her teeth with a stylus. "I'm not sure we do. You've been to her cottage?" 

"Yes, earlier today." Zoë held up the leaflet. "I was here this morning and the assistant thought there might be something on the computer. But she couldn't work it." 

"Aye, she told me. That was you, was it?" She gave Zoë a sharp look, though the shop was so dimly-lit I wasn't sure what good it would do. "I'll take a wee look." 

She slid aside a panel festooned with sparkly oak-leaves. I presumed there was some kind of computer behind it, though from where I was standing I couldn't see it. She poked at it with a stylus for a while. 

"We've got some Goody Ricker tea-towels," she said. "And some pendants." 

She held one up. It had an etched drawing on it, similar to the one we'd seen in the Encyclopædia of Witchcraft; the witch, with her broom and hat, and a pentacle behind her. 

"Thanks, but they're not really what I was looking for," Zoë said. "It seems a bit odd." 

"What does?" 

"Well, she's this village's most famous inhabitant, isn't she? I'd have thought people would know more about her." 

The woman shook her head. "Not these days. There's not many still interested in history. People like to think they're scientific and rational. They don't like to think too hard about their ancestors believing in witches. They'll cope with Goody Ricker as a Hallowe'en witch like that." She tapped the pendant with her stylus. "Not as a real woman." 

"So the children don't recite rhymes about her, then?" Zoë asked. 

"I never heard them. Why?" 

"Lily knows one." She turned to me. "Let's hear it." 

I repeated the rhyme. The woman shook her head. 

"I never heard that before," she said. "Or anything like. Where did you pick it up?" 

"We're not sure," Zoë said, before I could answer. 

"I'll tell you what." The woman took an e-paper notelet, decorated with purple stars and moons. "Write it down, and I'll ask my husband about it. He knows a bit about local history." 

I took the notelet and the stylus, and wrote down the rhyme. Then, having exchanged contact details, we left the shop. 

"Have you worked out why this witch business is bothering you?" I said, as we walked down the street. 

"No," Zoë said. "And that's why it's bothering me." 

"But there can't be anything in it, can there? Whoever this Goody Ricker was, she'd just have been an old woman with perhaps a few strange ideas." 

"That depends what the ideas were." Zoë walked on silently for a bit, then looked up. "Lily, what do you think of this? The leaflet says she had a cave where she called up the Devil. Suppose she was in contact with the Precursors. You know, the reptile people. The people of that time would think of them as devils. Maybe she did, too." 

"But I thought humanity didn't make contact with the reptiles until the last century." 

"Not officially, no. That doesn't rule out an earlier contact." 

"And why would they talk to her? They'd think she was just a primitive ape-creature. I mean, they still think that about us today with all our technology. Why would they bother with someone hundreds of years ago?" 

"Perhaps they needed something and she could get it for them." 

"And if they gave her advanced technology, the villagers would think of it as magic." I turned the idea over in my head. "I suppose it makes sense. But you haven't got any proof that it happened that way. Maybe she was just a mad old biddy." 

Zoë nodded. "Maybe. But it's one possibility, at least. There are others." 

"What others?" 

"I'm not sure," Zoë said. "I want to check something first." 

We walked back to the guesthouse in uneasy silence. 

⁂

Once we got back to the guesthouse, a glance at the dossier seemed to set Zoë's suspicions, whatever they were, to rest. We changed and freshened up, and presently set out again — this time, for our date at the _Leaping Fish_. Or rather, my date; Zoë promised she wouldn't get in the way. 

"Is it a proper date?" she asked. 

I smiled. "I'm hoping so." 

"You don't have any, well, romantic complications?" 

"I haven't got a boyfriend at the moment, if that's what you mean," I said. "What about you?" 

Zoë shook her head. "Not at the moment. Or a girlfriend, either." 

"Oh." I hadn't realised Zoë was into girls as well. I wondered briefly what on earth I'd do if she were to ask me out, and thanked my lucky stars she never had. 

"I seem to have a problem connecting with people," Zoë went on. "I tend to meet someone, go out with them a few times, start a relationship... and then I find there's nothing we can talk about. Or the nightmares start again. People tend to take it personally when I sleep with them and then wake up screaming." 

"Is that because you're so brainy?" I asked. "Do the rest of us seem like goldfish to you?" 

"I tested that hypothesis. I got a dating computer to profile me and it matched me up with a nice microbiologist called Rod." She was using her cold, factual, emotionless voice; that meant she was suppressing how upset she really felt. "It didn't work. We were on each other's level, intellectually, but he said I was scary." 

I looked down at her in astonishment. "Scary?" 

"It was the nightmares again. After the first one he decided I was unbalanced — one day I'd snap and strangle him in his sleep. After him I tried the complete opposite. Sunita's a lovely girl, but she really is a bit thick. She didn't mind the nightmares, but she said I've got weird kinks. Which is rich coming from a girl who's got a thing for being wrapped up in clingfilm—" 

"Too much information!" I protested. 

Zoë blinked. "You're right. I didn't mean to burden you with my love life. The point is, we're both available if Keith — or anyone else — wants to take matters that far. Would you, by the way?" 

"Yes," I heard myself say, while the rational part of my brain was still composing an answer. 

"OK. Well, if you decide to go back to his place tell me, so I know not to wait up for you." 

"Will do." I decided the subject was overdue for a change. "What was that idea you had on the way to the guesthouse? When we got there you looked at the dossier and said there was nothing in it." 

"Oh, that." Zoë looked embarrassed. "I thought the things getting stolen might be a — well, 'formula' isn't quite the right word. But they weren't." 

"What do you mean, not quite a formula?" 

Zoë didn't meet my eye. "More like a recipe." 

If she hadn't spent the last day obsessing over some centuries-ago witch, I don't think I'd have worked out what she was driving at. But as it was, it didn't take me long to get there. "Do you mean a magic spell?" 

"There's no such thing as magic," Zoë said, still not looking at me. "At least, not the way you're describing it. If you could turn someone into a frog by boiling up bits of dead animals, people would have studied the phenomenon, performed experiments, and determined its underlying rules. Like Newton with optics. It would just be another branch of science." She paused. "I suppose if someone thought magic was real, they might be trying to follow an old spell they'd found, but I've never seen a spell that matches—" 

She broke off, looking almost guilty. 

"I don't understand," I said. "What do you know about magic?" 

Zoë stopped walking, and took a deep breath. 

"I can't tell you," she said. "I mean, literally _can't_. I've been psychologically conditioned not to reveal the details. But you know we were talking earlier about how primitive people might see the reptile people's technology as magic?" 

"Yes?" 

"Well, supposing a monk or someone saw them, and wrote down what they saw. Or at least, the nearest they could come with their concepts. Wiring up an electrical connection might come out as tongue of snake." 

"With you so far." 

"And now suppose someone discovered that account, and tried to work back from the spellbook to the underlying technology." 

"That wouldn't work, surely." 

"I've seen people try it." Zoë stopped talking for a moment, and nervously knotted her fingers. "Did you ever watch _The Laundry Files?_ " 

"Yes." 

"I was thinking of the bits where they do computational demonology." 

I shivered. "Do you mean that's real?" 

She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. She swallowed, shrugged apologetically, and said "Sorry. I told you I'd been conditioned. I can't go any further into that topic." 

It was about fifty metres further down the road that she said, as much to herself as to me, "I wonder how advanced a piece of technology would have to be for _us_ to see it as magic?" 

⁂

Zoë was as good as her word. Once we'd reached the pub, she spent a few moments with me until Keith showed up, then quietly drifted away. Keith and I went to a quiet corner with our drinks and were soon chatting as if we'd known each other for years. 

"So you're here for your holiday?" he asked me. 

"That's right," I said. Zoë and I had firmed up our cover story and tested each other on it until we were sure it would hold water. "It was Zoë's idea, really. She's looking into her family history, and thought she might have had ancestors here. I just came along for the ride, more or less. She likes to have someone to talk to." 

"Isn't that what voice recorders are for?" he asked, with a smile. 

"I suppose it's harder to make a voice recorder feel stupid." 

He glanced across at Zoë, who was sitting on her own with a barely-touched glass of lemonade, and looking positively inscrutable. 

"What does she do?" He asked. "I mean, in her day job?" 

"Some kind of scientific research, I think." 

He turned back to me, and I felt as if I was the only girl in the room. 

"And what do you do, Lily?" he asked. "Apart from turn heads wherever you go?" 

I couldn't help blushing again. "I'm a senior account manager." 

"So you're in charge of a lot of people? I'll have to watch what I—" 

Keith momentarily broke off, looking rather confused. I followed the direction of his gaze, and saw that the girl from The Goddess's Bower had just come in. She'd changed out of her historical costume into a plasticloth dress that looked about a size too small for her. She looked back at him for a moment, then coloured and turned away. 

"I hope you're not going to tell me you've never set eyes on that girl in your life," I said. 

"I'd not insult your intelligence, Lily." He put his hand on mine. "I won't deny Moira and I were close, but we weren't suited." 

"That's a shame. At least, it would be a shame for her. It would have to be. Missing out on someone like you." I could feel myself stumbling over my words. "Sorry, I didn't mean..." 

"I think I've got a good idea what you meant," he said, with a smile. "D'you fancy another drink?" 

⁂

Keith downed the dregs of his glass, and looked at the timestrip on the wall. 

"It's getting late," he said. "I think we'd better make a move." 

"We?" I asked. 

"Well, only if you'd like to. My flat's not far away — maybe we could have cocoa or something." 

I giggled. "I like the sound of 'something'. But I need to take a quick comfort break before we go." 

As I made my way to the Ladies', I caught Zoë's eye, and she came in while I was washing my hands. 

"I'm going back to Keith's place," I said. "Don't wait up." 

"That was quick work," Zoë said. She didn't sound as if she altogether approved. 

"He knows what he wants, and so do I. By the way, you know that fat girl in the shop this morning?" 

Zoë started washing her hands too, seemingly on general principles. "I wouldn't call her fat." 

I decided not to contest the point. "She's been sitting in the corner all evening. You must have seen her. Wearing an awful purple dress." 

"Yes. I noticed." 

"Well, it turns out she's Keith's ex. I've no idea what he saw in her." 

Zoë gave me a stern look. "Lily." 

"That explains why he didn't want to come into the shop this morning. That's all." 

"Yes, I think you're right." Zoë finished drying her hands, turned to go, then turned back. "What's her name?" 

"Moira something-or-other. Why?" 

"I think," Zoë said, not answering my question, "I might have a little chat with her. She looks lonely. I'm sure she could do with some girl talk." 

⁂

It was a quiet, calm night as Keith and I walked arm in arm through the streets of Balcrynie. There weren't any street lights, but Keith had a small torch, and between that and the moon we got on well enough. 

"Not far now," he said. "Hang on, what's that?" 

"What's what?" 

He pointed. "That." 

For a moment, I couldn't see what he meant. Then I saw it: a red-orange flicker in the window of a nearby cottage. At first I thought it was a fire in the cottage, but then I realised it was a reflection. I turned wildly, trying to see where the glow was coming from. It must be somewhere in that alley we'd just passed. 

"It's there!" I said, and the two of us ran back to the alley. The building on fire was at the far end, on the first floor — it took me a moment or two before I realised it was the bookshop we'd visited that morning. Smoke was curling out round the edges of the door, and the orange light was waxing and waning in the window. 

I took a few steps towards the shop, but Keith caught my arm. 

"We need to call the fire service," he said. "There's a public booth just across the way." 

He led me to the booth, and put the call through. I listened to him with only half an ear, unable to tear my eyes off the fire. From across the road, it didn't look particularly bad, but I couldn't help worrying that at any moment it would suddenly flare up and bring the whole building down. And we wouldn't be able to do anything but stand there and watch. 

"They're on their way," Keith said, coming out of the booth. "Remember back in the pub I said nothing ever happens here? Look at how wrong I was." 

I was fidgeting from one foot to the other. "Surely there's something we can do?" I asked. "See if there's anyone trapped in there?" 

"Lily." He squeezed my hand. "You're a brave lass, but I don't want to see you hurt." 

"I'll just try and see," I said. "I won't go in. Promise." 

I hurried back into the alley, and up the steps to the shop door. The handle was hot to the touch, but not so hot I couldn't turn it. I tugged at the door, and found it wasn't locked. As the door opened, the orange light of the fire brightened to yellow, and for the first time I could hear the crackling as it burned. I looked through the door, but between the smoke, the flames and the stacks of books I couldn't make out much of anything. I didn't think there was anyone lying on the floor, though. 

I slammed the door again, rejoined Keith at the bottom of the steps, and told him what I'd seen. 

"Don't try any heroics," he said. "Mr McPhail wouldn't be in there at this time of night. And I don't think there's anyone living downstairs, either." 

Before I could reply, there was a hum from the public T-Mat booth across the road, and a woman dressed in firefighter's uniform appeared in it. She hurried over to where we were, took stock of the situation, and issued a string of orders into a wrist communicator. Having done that, she took our names and details. By the time she'd done that, several more people had arrived, from other buildings in the alley, and from elsewhere in the village. 

The firefighter raised a voice-amp to her mouth. "Please keep back, all of you," she said. "The situation is under control." 

"It had just better be," a man protested, pushing his way to the front of the crowd. I recognised him as the proprietor of the bookshop. "That's my stock burning in there!" 

"Rather it than you," the firefighter said shortly. "You're the owner of this building?" 

"The tenant." 

"And you're not aware of any flammable chemicals on the premises?" 

"It's a bookshop." He gave the burning building an anguished look. "Or was." 

An ungainly-looking aircraft swooped down out of the dark sky and took up station over the alley, its antigravs emitting a loud throbbing sound. The firefighter pulled a black rod from her belt, aimed it at the shop, and pressed a button. With a thump and a splintering noise, the door fell out of its frame. Once again, the orange light brightened, and we heard the roaring of the fire. She pressed another button, and a jet of foam blasted down from the hovering aircraft into the shop door. A few seconds later, the window had been broken and more foam was being pumped into the shop. 

When we'd been waiting for the fire service to arrive, each minute had stretched into an eternity. By comparison, now they were here, it seemed to take them no time at all to bring the fire under control. As the flames hissed into silence and the orange glow finally died away, the crowd drifted away. I thought for a moment I caught a glimpse of Zoë and the other girl — Moira — but they were only outlines in the darkness. 

"Come along," Keith said, taking my arm. "There's nothing more to do here." 

I nodded, and let him lead me back to his flat. It wasn't anything much to look at — just a couple of rooms over a shop — but then, when I caught sight of myself in a mirror, I wasn't much to look at either. There were sooty marks on my clothes, and a smell of smoke hung round me. 

"Do you mind if I use your shower?" I asked. "I'm a mess." 

Keith leaned closer to me. "You're nothing of the kind. But if you'd like to use the shower, you're welcome to it. Maybe we could use it together." 

"I'd like that," I said. 

By now our arms were round each other. Sooty or not, we shared what turned out to be our first kiss of many.


	6. Tea and Sympathy

> _When the gorse is out of bloom, kissing's out of fashion._

—19th century proverb

I spent the night with Keith, just as I'd hoped, and we finally kissed each other goodbye when he had to get along to his job at the tearoom. I walked back in the direction of the guesthouse, but before I got there I met Zoë coming the other way. 

"There you are," she said. "Come along." 

"Can't I change?" I asked. I'd had no choice but to wear my sooty clothes from last night, and as far as I was concerned I looked a complete wreck. But Zoë didn't seem to care. I didn't think she looked her usual bright, cheery self, either. She more or less force-marched me to the recreation ground. 

"Anything of interest to report?" she asked, once she decided we were far enough away from her imaginary eavesdroppers. "How did you find Keith?" 

"He's gorgeous," I said. 

"That's certainly a point of view," Zoë said drily. "I don't think Moira would agree with you." 

"Oh. Yes, I suppose she would have mentioned him." 

Zoë nodded. "At considerable length. In her version, she didn't do anything wrong. He just dumped her. She was already upset because she'd lost her job, and she thinks maybe she wasn't good enough for him any more." 

"There's got to be more to it than that," I said. 

"I expect there is." Zoë kicked at a clump of grass, and added, in bitter tones, "There usually is." 

I'd skirted round the question of her mood this morning, but it seemed to me that it couldn't be avoided any more. "Zoë, what's the matter?" 

Zoë bit her lip. "I did something idiotic. It was when I was walking Moira home. By the way, did you know there's been a fire at Balcrynie Eclectic Books?" 

"I need to tell you about that," I said. "But what happened between you and Moira?" 

Zoë avoided my eyes. "I kissed her." 

"Oh," was all I could manage. 

"Quite. I don't know what came over me. I was feeling... sorry for her, I think. I remember thinking I ought to hug her, and— well, I think I must have got carried away." Zoë knotted her fingers. "She didn't like it at all. Hardly surprising, really." 

I imagined what my reaction would be if a woman I hardly knew had suddenly kissed me. Or a man, come to that. "No. What were you _thinking?_ " 

"I don't think I was thinking at all. Normally I'd have made sure of her sexual orientation at the very least." Her voice hardened. "This is what comes of doing what all you people keep telling me to do and trusting my instincts." 

"What happened then?" I asked, trying not to take any notice of the way she'd said 'you people.' 

"I said I was sorry, and perhaps it would be better if we left it there. We went our own ways. She wasn't too far from her house." Zoë took a deep breath. "That's pretty much it. Now, what do you know about this fire?" 

I recounted the events of the previous night, as they touched on the fire. Zoë added her own account, such as it was. She'd still been in the pub with Moira when the word of the fire had got around, and, along with most of the other patrons, had hurried along to watch. 

"When I came past this morning there was a forensic cordon around the end of the alley," she said. "I suppose they're trying to find out who started it." 

"You mean you think it was started on purpose?" I said. 

"Remember, you said the door was unlocked. I don't think Mr McPhail habitually leaves his shop open. It's more likely that someone broke in. Of course, they'll probably only find your fingerprints on the door handle." 

"I suppose so." I'd thought my heart was already in my boots, but it seemed there was a little more way for it to sink. "I expect I'll be questioned by the police, won't I?" 

"You didn't see anyone leaving the alley, did you?" 

"No, but I wasn't really looking. I was thinking about... other things." 

"I'm sure you were," Zoë said, with what I thought was a hint of snippiness in her voice. 

"Have we finished out here?" I said. "I want to go and get changed." 

"Nearly. Mrs Groome sent us a note asking if we'd like to come round for coffee at ten." Zoë must have noticed my baffled look, because she added, in a tone of voice suggesting I was a halfwit, "The manager of the Goddess's Bower, remember?" 

"Oh, yes, her." I looked at my watch. "We'd better get a move on, then." 

⁂

From the outside, the Groomes' house wasn't much different from most of the other cottages in Balcrynie. Inside, it was probably the most up-to-date building I'd been in: the furniture was to the latest chrome-and-polymer designs, the lighting was all aura panels, and they even had a robot to make the coffee for us. I'd seen them in catalogues of expensive novelties, but this was the first time I'd actually met someone who'd bought one. 

Out of her costume, Mrs Groome looked a lot more fashionable, not to mention comfortable. She introduced us to her husband, who was a burly, expensively-dressed man with grizzled hair, and then went through an elaborate ritual of having the robot serve us coffee and a selection of flavour capsules. I don't think it saved any time on just making the coffee in a normal food machine — if anything, it took longer. 

We chatted about trivial matters for a while, and then Mr Groome got round to the actual reason we'd been invited there. 

"I've been trying to trace that rhyme you heard," he said. "I've never heard it before, and there's not so much as a line of it in any of my books. Sorry I couldn't be more help." 

"That's a pity," Zoë said. We looked at each other; I had a pretty good idea what she was thinking. It didn't seem likely that we'd been invited round just for Mr Groome to tell us that. He could just have dropped us a message. "I couldn't find any references to it either." 

"A mystery, isn't it?" Mr Groome picked up the notelet and looked once again at the transcript of the rhyme. "I read up on Goody Ricker while I was looking. It fits what's known of her, right enough. Maybe it could be real." 

"Did you find anything else about her in your books?" Zoë asked. 

He shook his head. "Only what everyone knows." 

"I see." 

"You went to Hugh McPhail's bookshop, I suppose?" 

"Yes. He couldn't find anything useful either. And of course now it's closed because of the fire." 

"That's a terrible thing," Mrs Groome put in. "They're saying the fire was started on purpose. There's never been anything like that in the village, all the time we've been here." 

"Have the police said anything yet?" I asked. "How bad was the damage?" 

Mrs Groome shook her head. "I daresay between the fire and the water a lot of his stock'll be ruined. Probably won't get much on the insurance, either. No-one'll pay much for occult books these days." 

"It sounds awful," Zoë said. "Why would anyone do that?" 

"Bored youngsters looking for trouble, I suppose," Mr Groome said. "Though I'll say the kids round these parts aren't too bad, as a rule." 

"Anyway, I'm sorry we couldn't be more help to you," Mrs Groome said. "Oh, and I hope you'll forgive young Moira if she was less than helpful to you yesterday morning. She's quite new on the job." 

"Yes, I spoke to her yesterday evening," Zoë said. "She'd been working at the fabricarium before." 

"Poor lass. There was quite a to-do about that, you know. There was a theft there. Synthmatter, or something, that couldn't be accounted for. Moira was one of the people the police spoke to. Anyway, the manager said he couldn't trust her and sent her packing. When there was no evidence against her at all." 

"No evidence in her favour, either," Mr Groome added. "If she's to be believed, she was out walking at the time. No way to prove it. But Dory here took a chance on her." 

"She's a good worker," Mrs Groome said, a little sharply. "And she's certainly not been pilfering in my shop." 

Mr Groome smiled. "Not a lot worth pilfering in there, of course." 

After that, the conversation drifted into trivialities again, and it wasn't long before we were being shown out, to the accompaniment of polite farewells. 

"I need to talk to Moira again," Zoë said. "She'll be working at the shop this morning, so we need to grab her when she comes off shift. And I need you to be there. After the mess I made of talking to her before, I'll need a chaperone." 

"She won't stand me," I said. "I'm the one who's sleeping with her ex-boyfriend." 

"I'll have to find someone else, then." Zoë made a frustrated gesture. 

"Do you believe her story?" 

"The police did," Zoë said. "And the psych-teams. Why shouldn't I?" 

"Well, she doesn't look like the sort of girl who'd go walking for pleasure." 

Zoë gave me a severe look. "You're being nasty about her weight again, aren't you? Please don't. Let's get back to the—" 

She broke off, and came to a halt. Once again, we'd missed our turning and nearly walked into the gates of the builder's yard. 

"I wish I didn't keep doing that," she said, and turned round, as if in a hurry to get away from the scene of her mistake. "Where was I? Oh, yes, we should get back to the guesthouse. I'd like another look at Moira's file. And see if there's a reply from the Zonal Archives yet." 

⁂

"Why are you so interested in Moira, anyway?" I asked. I was perched on the corner of my bed, while Zoë was paging through screens of information faster than I could follow. 

"Of the people we've got to know so far, she's got the closest connection to the thefts," Zoë said. "It's not the theft we were sent here to look at, but assuming they're connected — and it's a pretty safe assumption — it might be the way to get to the people who are doing this. And it's one of the more interesting thefts: Synthmatter feedstock. It would fetch a fair amount on the black market, of course, particularly if you can get it before the tracer molecules are injected." 

"And the drum that was pinched hadn't had that done to it?" 

"That's right. With the right equipment it could be used to make all sorts of realistic forgeries. Including the replica skull that was used in the first theft." 

"But it's the wrong way round. The replica was made before the synthmatter was stolen." 

"I know. But there are ways to work round that. Suppose the synthmatter to make the replica came from somewhere else, where they knew no-one would check on it for a while. Then, later, they stole the drum to replenish what they'd taken." 

"It sounds complicated." 

"It makes logical sense, that's the main thing." Zoë moved to the next item on her to-do list. "You asked why it was decided to dig the area with the meteorite. Apparently it was picked up on a routine gravimetric survey of the area. The army thought it might be an unexploded bomb, but when it became apparent it was a meteorite they handed over to the archaeologists." 

"That all sounds above board." 

"Yes, I think so. Ah. This is my answer from the Zonal Archives... That's interesting." 

"What is?" 

"They've got an outstation at Heriotside. That's only just down the valley from here. They might not have what we want, but I think it'll be worth checking there first. It'll save us flying all the way to Edinburgh." 

"You could just use the T-Mat." 

Zoë shook her head. "That's not an option." 

I asked why, but she wouldn't tell me.


	7. The Grey Lady

> _The past is never dead. It's not even past._
> 
> — William Faulkner,  Requiem for a Nun

Since it was obvious that it wouldn't be any good having me around when Zoë talked to Moira, Zoë went off on her own, agreeing that we should meet up at the recreation ground at lunchtime. I checked my incoming messages, and got a surprise of my own: the police wanted to interview me. When I replied and asked when I should show up, they said now was as good a time as any. I headed back in the direction of Balcrynie Eclectic Books, where they'd apparently set up their incident room. 

The incident room, it turned out, was a medium-sized gravpod parked at the end of the alleyway, just below the staircase leading to the bookshop. It only had one occupant, a woman who introduced herself as Constable Selby. 

"Now, this is just a matter of routine," she said. "We're taking everyone's fingerprints who's known to have been near the shop recently." 

"I think you'll find mine on the door handle," I said. "When I saw the shop was on fire I opened the door to see if there was anyone in there." 

"The door was unlocked, then?" she asked, and went on to try and establish every detail of both times I'd been to the bookshop. Her last question was "Is there anyone who can confirm your story?" 

"Keith..." I realised he'd never told me his second name, and I hadn't seen it written down either. "He works in the tearoom at Goody Ricker's cottage." 

"Young man with light brown hair and freckles?" She smiled. "That'll be Keith Bell, I suspect. You're walking out with him?" 

"I— well, yes." 

"I'm sure he'll back you up, then. I'll make a note to have a wee word with him." She sat back. "Now, do you have any questions?" 

"How much damage did the fire do?" I asked. 

"Not as much as it might. Mr McPhail reckons a lot of the books should be salvageable. That's thanks to your prompt action in giving the warning." 

"Do you know if the fire was started on purpose?" I asked. 

"Officially, that's still to be proven. But we've ruled out most other possible causes." 

The conversation pretty much dried up after that. Once my statement was transcribed and checked, I signed it, and then left the incident room. As I passed the steps to the bookshop, I noticed the police cordon had been removed. Mr McPhail was at the top of the steps, throwing charred lumps that had once been books into a sack. 

On an impulse, I ran up the steps. 

"Do you need any help?" I asked. 

He shook his head. "No thanks," he said gruffly. 

"Sorry, I just thought..." I cast around for something else to say. "I hope they get the vandals who did this." 

That seemed to catch his interest. He looked up from his sack with a definite glint in his eye. 

"This wasn't vandals," he said. For a moment I thought he wasn't going to say any more, but he straightened up and pointed into the shop. 

"Look over there," he said, indicating the far side of the room, where the fire hadn't reached. "Bookcase G. The books in there aren't the same ones as yesterday. They took some out and moved others in." 

I thought about this. "So... someone stole something from that bookcase? Do you know what it was they took?" 

He shook his head, bent down again, and picked up a charred fragment of a cover. "This was my inventory. They knew where to find it — and they made sure it was burned." 

"So all this was just to try and cover up that they'd stolen a book?" 

"One or more, maybe." 

I looked into the shop again, at the heaps of sodden, ruined books. "Have you told the police?" 

"What's to tell them? With no inventory I can't prove anything was stolen. I can't even say what book to look out for." He scowled at me. "There's nothing you can do here, lass. Get along with you." 

I got along. 

⁂

I waited at the recreation ground for some time before Zoë showed up. If she'd been hoping to have one of her confidential conversations in the middle of the football pitch, she was out of luck; half-a-dozen children were alternately kicking and throwing a ball about, pausing only to argue furiously about the rules of whatever game they were playing. We had to make do with sitting on a park bench. Zoë had brought a picnic, which turned out to be odd-tasting food concentrate bars and bottled water. 

Once Zoë had interrogated me about my morning's activities, she gave her own account of how she'd got on with Moira. 

"I waited till Mrs Groome went to the shop to take over from Moira," she said. "Then I went in and said I wanted to apologise for how I'd behaved last night, and could I make it up to her somehow? I suggested I could buy her a drink, and she could bring a friend if she was worried about how I might behave. It turned out she doesn't have any friends, poor girl. 

"Anyway, Mrs Groome thought it would be a good idea, and more or less persuaded Moira into saying Yes. So we went to the pub and talked. Well, she talked and I listened, mostly. A lot of it was about Keith, of course. They'd known each other at school, but it wasn't until they both had jobs at the fabricarium that she really fell for him. They were together... about half a year, I suppose. 

"It all started falling apart in May. First he left the fabricarium because he thought he'd found a better job at Clavius Central. Well, Moira didn't like the idea of that. They'd be paying a fortune in T-Mat fares to be seeing each other. Then the better job fell through and he had to work in the tearoom for less than what he'd been getting before. Then there was the burglary at the fabricarium and Moira got the sack. She thought he was avoiding her for a bit, then he told her he didn't think their relationship was working out. 

"I think she still hoped he might come back to her until she saw him with you. You were right about her not liking you, Lily. I've got quite a list of the names she called you. 

"That's really beside the point, though. She did talk quite a bit about the burglary. She was the last person in the stockroom before the theft was noticed. There's security footage of her leaving the fabricarium, and she isn't carrying a drum of synthmatter or anything big enough to conceal it. I suppose maybe it could have been hidden in her clothes, but it doesn't sound very likely. From the way the police questioned her, it seems more likely they thought she'd come back after hours to take the drum. 

"They had her psi-probed." Zoë winced. "I've had to have that done to me, and it's a horrible experience. But they couldn't locate any memories of her going back to the shop or stealing the drum. In the end they had to close the case for lack of evidence." 

"You said the security camera showed her leaving the fabricarium," I said. "Shouldn't they have had one in the stockroom itself, so they could see if she pinched a drum or not?" 

"They did, but it had an intermittent fault. It had been like it for months and no-one did anything about it. After the theft, they had it examined properly and found the loose connection. It was probably loosened deliberately, of course, but who can say when?" 

"It seems like it was all carefully thought out, doesn't it?" 

Zoë took a swig of water. "I wonder. What they do is done very smoothly. I just don't see why they're doing it. If that fossil they stole is alien, they could name their price for it. If they can pull off something like that, why would they waste their time helping themselves to rings from the local jeweller's?" 

"Perhaps they don't know what the fossil's worth?" I said uncertainly. "Or they don't know who they can sell it to?" 

"But if they could learn enough to infiltrate the original dig site, why can't they find that sort of thing out?" Zoë shrugged. "We can think about that on the way to Heriotside. I'll fly the hopper this time, if you like." 

⁂

The flight from Balcrynie to the Zonal Archives' outstation at Heriotside would have been a short one, if we'd flown as the crow flies. It actually took rather longer, because Zoë once again insisted we should fly an evasive route, and still wouldn't explain why. I was definitely getting uneasy about the whole eavesdropping thing. Either she knew something I didn't, and was taking proper precautions — or, as I was beginning to worry, she was taking needless measures against enemies who didn't exist outside her imagination. 

The outstation, when we finally landed there, turned out to be a stately home, set in landscaped grounds. From the landing pad, we walked up the drive towards the imposing front door. 

"Who built all this?" I wondered out loud. 

Zoë, being Zoë, knew the answer. "The Lairds of Heriotside. They lived here for centuries — it took several rounds of land reform to get them out." 

I think our surroundings must have been getting to me, because when we reached the door and buzzed for entrance, I was half-expecting a distant bell to ring and some aged retainer to lead us into the presence of a tartan-clad Laird. In fact, we got a cheerful-looking man who looked as if he might sell soft drinks for a living. 

"Wilson Julius," he said. "I'm the deputy head archivist. Do come in. You'll be Doctor Heriot and Ms Carson?" 

"That's right," I said, shaking his hand. "Lily Carson." 

He turned to Zoë, looked properly at her for the first time, and did something that was very nearly a double-take. 

"So you're Doctor Heriot," he said. "Come in." 

We walked through a series of hallways to the foot of an oak staircase. A steel walkway had been laid on top of the original floorboards, which Mr Julius explained was so they could bring trolleys in and out without damaging the floor. 

"The book stacks are in the basement and the ground floor," he said. "We've set up a reading room in the old library. But I think there's something else you ought to see first." 

I leaned forward. "What's that?" 

"It's more a matter for your colleague. Doctor Heriot, do you know if you ever had any family in these parts?" 

I felt Zoë stiffen beside me. 

"No," she said. "But everyone seems to think I ought to. Why? Is it because of my name?" 

Mr Julius didn't answer, but instead started walking up the stairs. 

"We keep other things than books here, of course," he said. "When we took the house on, there was a small collection of artefacts already here. We've tried to maintain the objects in their original setting." 

At the top of the staircase, he turned to the right, and led us along a corridor. Halfway along, he stopped before a door, which was secured with a huge, old-fashioned mechanical lock, and a thumbprint scanner to boot. 

"The key's somewhere here..." He sorted through a bunch of old-looking keys on a large ring. "This one." 

He unlocked the ancient lock, then pressed his thumb to the scanner and opened the door. The room inside appeared to be a bedroom, now partly dismantled. Dustsheets covered the furniture and a painting on the wall. 

Mr Julius closed the door, crossed to the covered painting, and turned to face us. 

"This is the Grey Lady," he said. 

I felt the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. It was foolish, but I half-expected something to jump out of the frame at us the moment the sheet was pulled off. Then, with a sudden jerk, the dustsheet fell away, and we saw the painting. 

It was a portrait of a young woman, dressed in a grey cloak. Round-faced, dark-haired, grey-eyed, her expression was serious, but the artist had contrived to make her look as if, given the right provocation, she would burst out laughing. Behind her was a table, with primitive star charts and an equally antiquated telescope on it. 

It was, without any question, a portrait of Zoë. 

Beside me, there was a soft moan and a thud. I spun round, to see Zoë lying motionless on the floor, as if she'd had an 'emergency stop' button and someone had pressed it.


	8. Turn Over Half a Library

> _A study of family portraits is enough to convert a man to the doctrine of reincarnation._
> 
> — Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,  The Hound of the Baskervilles

Between us, we got Zoë out of that room and into another bedroom just along the corridor, which had been set up as a first-aid station. We laid her out on the bed. 

"Do you think we should get a doctor?" I asked. "Or do you have an autodoc here?" 

Mr Julius checked her pulse. "I shouldn't think there's any need for that. Do you know if she's prone to fainting fits?" 

I shook my head. "I've never seen her like this before." 

"Well, let's give her a little time." 

"I suppose it was the shock," I said. "Seeing the painting, I mean. It gave me quite a turn. I suppose her family must have lived here once. Unless... how old is that picture?" 

"Over three hundred years," Mr Julius replied soberly. "It's been authenticated. It dates to before this house was built: it's mentioned in the inventory of the Old Hall, the one before this." 

"Do you know who she was? The girl in the—" 

Zoë's eyes snapped open. 

"What happened?" she asked, sounding somewhat irritable. "Where am I?" 

"You fainted," I said. "When you saw the portrait." 

"What portrait?" Zoë furrowed her brow. "Oh, yes. Mr Julius was going to show us a painting, wasn't he?" 

"You don't remember?" 

"The last thing I remember was him pulling the dustsheet off," Zoë said, slowly. "Then I opened my eyes, and I was here." 

"So you didn't remember the picture?" 

"No, I don't. How many times do you need telling? And what was so special about that picture, anyway?" 

I took a deep breath. "It looked like you. I mean, _exactly_ like you. But it's hundreds of years old." 

"You're sure?" 

"Quite sure," Mr Julius said. "It's part of the original collection from the house. I can show you the inventories." 

"Then who's it supposed to be?" 

Mr Julius looked at her for a moment, as if to refresh his memory of the portrait. "Her real name isn't known; we call her the Grey Lady. The picture's been dated to the seventeenth century. There's a tradition it was painted by Lady Janet — there's a picture of her in the collection, from around the same time." 

"That's all?" Zoë asked. 

"That's all I know. The records from that time aren't the most reliable, I'm afraid." 

"Would you like to see the picture again?" I asked. 

Zoë swung herself off the bed. "No," she said, sounding almost frightened at the prospect. "It's an interesting piece of trivia," she added hastily, "But what I really came to look at is Nicholas Welford's _Reminiscences_. I'll see what else I need after that." 

⁂

I hadn't had the privilege of watching Zoë fillet a library before. She started off reasonably enough, with one book, speed-reading each page and then running a handheld digitiser over it. Now and again she'd stop to slice open an uncut page, skip to another section of the book, or type some notes on the digitiser's keypad, but for the most part she just sat there, her eyes flickering across the ancient paper. 

After she'd been going a while she touched a button on the digitiser and a strip of paper emerged, listing a sequence of file references. She handed me the paper and the book. 

"Take that book back to the stacks," she said, "and come back with as many of these as they've got." 

When I got back it was with half-a-dozen books in my hands. Zoë eagerly took the first one and started the same process, and from then on I was more or less constantly on the move, back and forward between the reading room, the stacks, and, now and again, other parts of the collection. The books I carried to and fro were all sorts; some looked terribly old, others as recent as the last century. Once Zoë had set the last book aside, she started in on microfilms, and then digital files. I caught sight of a couple, but I couldn't work out how, starting at some long-dead presbyter's memoirs, she'd reached river depth profiles or a report into test drilling for oil. 

After she'd closed the last file down and typed up her last note, I thought that would be it. But instead she sent me off to the stacks again, with another shopping list. I thought they must be additional references she'd chased up from the more recent files. When I brought the books back, though, she seemed almost reluctant to look at them. In each case, she started by turning to the index, then to a specified page or couple of pages. 

On the fifth or sixth book, she suddenly clutched her head and gasped. 

"Are you all right?" I asked. 

Zoë shook her head. "Take a look at that page." 

She pushed the book across the table to me. Nervously, I turned it round so I could see it, and found a black-and-white picture of Zoë looking solemnly up at me. I recognised the Grey Lady portrait. 

"Is that the same picture that was upstairs?" Zoë asked. 

I nodded. "That's the one." 

"I see." Zoë had one hand over her eyes, still. "Can you read that page to me? It hurts when I look at it." 

"OK," I said doubtfully. "'At its height, no-one dared challenge the Craft. We still remember, with honour and awe, those women whose skill ushered in an all-too-brief golden age. No village was without its wise woman. Among the greatest of these were Alison Sempill of Gledsmuir, Sarah Ricker of Balcrynie, and...'" 

"And?" Zoë repeated. 

"'And the Grey Lady of Heriotside (pictured) whose true name is lost to the ages,'" I read slowly. 

"Thanks. That'll do." Zoë closed the book, looking away from it while she did so. It was called _The Threefold Sword: Persecutions of Magick_ , and I guessed it was about a hundred years old. 

A couple of books later, Zoë really was done. She closed down the files she'd been using, sorted the books into a neat heap, and sent me off to return everything to the stacks. When I got back, she wasn't there. I waited in the library for what felt like half an hour, till she showed up in the doorway, looking tired and pale. 

"Zoë!" I jumped to my feet. "Are you OK?" 

"I think so." Zoë leaned against the doorframe. "I went back with Mr Julius and had another look at that portrait. The same thing happened — I went out like a light." 

"Why did you — Don't tell me. You're a scientist, and you wanted to repeat the experiment." 

Zoë smiled weakly. "Got it in one. I could really do with a mug of tea." 

"We can get one back at Balcrynie," I said, and gave her another worried look. "I think I'd better fly the hopper." 

⁂

Having programmed the navcomp for one of her usual evasive routes, Zoë leaned back in her seat, closed her eyes and left me to do the flying. I gave her the occasional glance, but I wasn't sure if she was taking a nap or just thinking. She didn't say anything until we'd landed back at Balcrynie, close to Goody Ricker's Cottage, and then it was just a conversational "Oh, we're here already." 

We went in and ordered Zoë's tea. Keith was on duty again; while Zoë drank her tea, I went over to the sales point and chatted to him. By the time Zoë had finished her tea, Keith and I had made a definite date for the evening. 

"D'you know how long you'll be here?" he asked. 

I shook my head. "It depends on what Zoë finds. We might be here for days, or finish up tomorrow." 

"I hope it's days," he said, with a smile. 

I heard myself saying "So do I." Before I could say any more, though, Zoë had joined us, wanting to settle up the bill. 

"By the way," she said, once the transaction was over. "Do you know anyone round these parts who's got caving equipment?" 

Keith looked startled. "I suppose there's Lee. He's the most likely. Why?" 

"Well, this afternoon one of the things I read was the journal of the Balcrynie Historical Association. The Autumn 1968 edition. It said they'd been mapping caves in the Lang Muir, and they'd come across a place that might have been Goody Ricker's cave." Zoë tapped the pile of leaflets on the counter. "So I wondered if I could take a look." 

"Right. Tell you what, I'll make sure Lee's at the _Leaping Fish_ this evening, and you two can talk it over then." 

"Thanks," Zoë said, and we took our leave of Keith. In my case, with a kiss. 

We flew the hopper back to the guesthouse, where Zoë checked her messages and I packed an overnight bag. It was, after all, pretty much a foregone conclusion that I'd be spending the night with Keith again. Then, at Zoë's suggestion, we walked down to the riverside, close to where the meteorite had been dug up in the first place. 

We tossed a few sticks into the river, for the sake of appearances; then Zoë glanced around suspiciously, put her lips almost to my ear, and lowered her voice so much I could hardly hear it over the sound of trickling water. What she said was "There's been another theft." 

"The same gang?" I asked. 

"Almost certainly. It was at Torness — Fusion Reactor G. They did a routine test of emergency procedures and one of the backup generators didn't start as it should have. When they investigated they found its rubidium batteries were missing." 

"But that's not some little backstreet shop!" I protested, forgetting to keep my voice low. "They must've had all sorts of security systems." 

"The recorders had been disabled by someone who knew the system intimately. But you're right. With the levels of redundancy in that place, I think a good data forensics expert would be able to trace who did it." 

"Have they established a connection to Balcrynie yet?" 

"Not yet, but it shouldn't take long. Someone who lives here, or has family here, or maybe just paid a visit in the last few months. And they'll psi-probe them, and find nothing." 

"Are you sure?" 

Zoë shook her head. "No, but it's what happened in all the other cases up to now." 

"How much would the batteries be worth?" 

"About six thousand credits each. Not so much for the materials — the scrap value wouldn't get anywhere near four figures — but they're complicated things to manufacture. The market for them can't be that big, though." 

"But you can't just take stuff from a fusion plant like that! They'll have Atomic Security and the World Zones Authority and who knows who else coming down on them like a tonne of bricks." I spread my hands. "This has got to be too big for us by now. What can we do compared to the police?" 

"I've got a good guess at what the police are doing," Zoë said. "Or at least, what I'd do if I had their resources. It's a matter of brute force, really. Saturation surveillance of as many likely targets as possible. Hidden tracking devices on vulnerable goods. Covert monitoring of everyone who goes in and comes out of here. And then sift the evidence you've gathered for the culprits. It would be like looking for Helium-3 in lunar regolith, but I expect that's the general idea." 

"But that doesn't answer my question. If the police can do all that, why are we here?" 

"I've got a couple of theories. Well, not so much theories as wild guesses. You know the sort of people You-Know-Who are. Maybe they think we can solve the case, catch the gang, and recover the artefact while the other agencies are still sorting themselves out." 

I shrugged. "We haven't got very far yet." 

"No. We'll have to go on cultivating the locals. Have you got anything relevant out of your boyfriend?" 

"Not yet." 

Zoë made a despairing noise. "Oh, Lily. It's bad enough you wasting hours and hours with him. You could at least try to make productive use of the time. We know he used to be Moira's boyfriend, and she was mixed up in one of the thefts. Start there and see if he knows any more." 

"All right," I said, a bit stiffly. 

"There's another question I need to ask you about Keith," Zoë said, sounding a little apprenhensive. 

"What?" 

"How serious is it between you? Are you actually in love with him?" 

"I— Why?" 

Zoë didn't answer. Instead, she stooped, picked up a stone, and tossed it vaguely in the direction of the river. Only then did she say "Do you remember when we were at school?" 

"Of course." 

"And do you remember I won the Mrs Blythe Prize for Pattern Recognition?" 

I shrugged. Zoë had been the sort of girl who'd won a prize or two pretty much every year, and I certainly hadn't been taking detailed notes of what they were. 

"Well, I did," Zoë continued. "And... well, I can recognise a pattern when I see one." 

"What sort of pattern?" I asked. I had a nasty feeling that whatever pattern Zoë was seeing, I was part of it, as if I was just a term in an equation she was trying to solve. 

"The sort of boys you fall for. Your 'type,' for want of a better word. They all turn out to be... unreliable. In one way or another. I don't think it would be a good idea to fall in love with Keith if you can avoid it. Look how he treated Moira." 

"Zoë!" For a moment, I was lost for words. Then anger supplied them. "You keep your nose out of my private business. I'm not some experiment for you to watch and take notes on. What would you know about love anyway? Madgirls like you have it clinically removed. Maybe that's why you've never managed to have a relationship longer than four weeks!" 

Zoë went white, and her lips set in a narrow line. 

"Have it your own way," she said, turned on her heel, and set off back in the direction of the village.


	9. Spy Out The Land

> _I only ask for information._
> 
> — Charles Dickens,  David Copperfield

My fit of temper didn't last long. By the time I met Keith at the _Leaping Fish_ my main emotion, where Zoë was concerned, was misery. I'd upset her, and I wanted to put that right. 

I didn't get a chance to talk to her straight away, because she was at a table with Moira again. She was listening to Moira with an almost starstruck expression, which I hardly thought Moira deserved. I'd thought Moira's dress the night before had been bad enough, but the tunic she'd squeezed herself into tonight was even less flattering. Still, Moira wasn't my concern. 

I joined Keith in a quiet corner. After a few moments, a skinny, scruffy-looking man, a few years older than us, came over to join us. 

"This is Lee," Keith said. "Lee, this is Lily." 

"Pleased to meet you." Lee sat down opposite us. "Keith said you wanted to ask about caving?" 

"Well, it's really Zoë more than me," I explained. "Hang on a moment and I'll get her." 

I crossed to where she was sitting, tapped her on the shoulder, and explained about Lee. She excused herself to Moira — who gave me a very nasty look — and came back to Keith's table. Once we'd had another round of introductions, Zoë got straight down to business. 

"There's a cave I'd like to take a look at," she said. "The one they thought might have been Goody Ricker's." 

Lee nodded. "I know the one. Been there a couple of times." 

"Do people go there often?" I asked. 

He shook his head. "There's nothing much to see, and you can't just walk in. That's the tricky bit, really. Have you done any caving before?" 

"We both have," Zoë said. "On an activity weekend. I remember that one was described as a grade 2 cave. What's this one like?" 

"Small — more of a pothole, really. The tricky bit's getting down there. It's a rope descent." He looked pensive. "I suppose I could rig some sort of harness and take you down there." 

"Oh, we've done rock climbing too," Zoë said. "I think we should be all right on our own, if you can lend us the equipment. Could we do it tomorrow?" 

Lee gave her a dubious look. "Tomorrow morning, maybe. How about at ten?" 

"You're sure that won't interfere with you? You must have your own work and so on." 

"I'm a field repair tech. As long as I don't get an urgent call before ten tomorrow, I can find the time." 

"All right. See you then. Lily, I expect you'll come round to our place beforehand, tomorrow morning — unless you plan to go potholing in that dress, of course." 

She laughed, and dashed back across the pub to resume her conversation with Moira. 

"Is she as good as she says she is?" Lee asked dubiously. 

"She's Elite-trained," I said. "She likes to think she can do anything after reading the manual for five minutes. What's annoying is she often can." I took a swig of my drink. "Like she said, we've both done some basic caving and rock climbing. Do you think that's enough?" 

"I should think so. If it's just that one cave you're interested in." 

"Just that one. Do you get a lot of people wanting to see it?" 

Lee shook his head. "We don't talk it up. It's just another cave. Pretty boring, too." He drained his glass and stood up. "Anyway, I'll leave you two to each other now. See you tomorrow at ten." 

"See you then," I said, and turned back to Keith. 

⁂

I hadn't forgotten Zoë's strictures about pumping Keith for information. Later that night, back at Keith's house, I tried to get him talking. The problem was that the only way I could get to the subject of the thefts was to start with a sensitive topic: Moira. 

"It must be awkward for you," I said. "Running into Moira all the time." 

We were close enough — to be honest, I was in bed with him at the time — that I'd have noticed if he tensed, or stiffened, or anything like that. But he seemed to take the question quite calmly. 

"It can't be helped," he said. "She'll get over it in time, I suppose." 

"What happened?" I asked, and hastily added "Sorry. I suppose it's none of my business, but it'd be nice to know what I shouldn't do." 

Keith sighed. "It just... wasn't fun any more. All we did was argue about money. I thought I'd got a job fixed up with DorniCorp up at Clavius, but then they decided to pull the plug on that whole branch. And I'd already handed in my notice at the fab — that was where we both worked, you see." 

"Wouldn't they have taken you back?" 

"Probably, but I was fed up of working there. In the end I got work at the tearoom, but that doesn't pay anything like as well. That meant I couldn't take Moira out, and we just spent all our time cooped up together. And then she got kicked out of her job. They said she'd been stealing, but no-one could prove anything." 

"What did she steal — if she stole it?" 

"Feedstock. They use it at the fab — it was worth quite a bit." 

"And they couldn't prove it was her?" 

I felt him shrug. "If she kept the loot, she hid it so well it's never been found. If she sold it, no-one knows what she did with the money." 

"But if there's no proof, why do people think it was her?" I asked. 

"Logic. There's only a few people with the right access tokens and codes. Most of them couldn't have been there at the time. Moira was." 

"Couldn't she have lent her token to someone?" 

"Like me, you mean? I was playing hockey at Galashiels that night." He leaned over and stroked my face. "No-one's proved anything one way or the other. Moira thinks I think she did it, and we argued... well, there's no point dragging up the past. Let's make the most of tonight — if you're agreeable, of course?" 

It was obvious that he wasn't in the mood for any more interrogation on the subject of Moira or thefts. And, when it came down to it, neither was I.


	10. That Darksome Cave

> _That darksome cave they enter, where they find  
>  That cursèd man, low sitting on the ground,  
>  Musing full sadly in his sullen mind._
> 
> — Edmund Spenser,  The Faerie Queene

The next morning I went back to the guesthouse to meet Zoë. We exchanged the fragments of information we'd gleaned from the previous night, which wasn't a lot. 

"Is that all you got out of him?" Zoë asked, once I'd related Keith's story about Moira. "Didn't you ask him about any of the other thefts?" 

"I couldn't very well bring the subject up," I said. "I'm not supposed to know about them." 

"I suppose not. I didn't really get anything new out of Moira, either, except she still has nightmares about the day of the theft." Zoë sighed. "I'm sure she knows something, if I can just find the right question." 

"You're sure..." I began hesitantly, and decided to start my sentence again. "You don't just think that because you're... fond of her?" 

"Maybe I do. Perhaps I'm doing all this just because I want to prove her innocence. I keep thinking it's got to be possible." Zoë folded her arms. "Which, logically, is nonsense. There are all sorts of things that aren't possible, and I was bound to run into one sooner or later. I just wish it wasn't this one." 

"Is there any more news on what happened at Torness?" I asked. 

"Good point." Zoë switched on the commpanel, and started flicking through screens of information. "Nothing public. Privately, they've established the connection with Balcrynie. Daniel So — he's one of the suspects — has a boyfriend here." 

"Should we talk to him? The boyfriend, I mean?" 

"He's in custody while the police go through his house. I don't expect they'll find anything. There's nothing the least bit suspicious about him — except that he lives here." Zoë glanced at the timestrip. "It's nearly time we went to meet Lee. We'd better get changed." 

I'd been potholing with Zoë before, when she'd tried it as a change from even more extreme sports, so I thought I had an idea what I was letting myself in for. We changed into our oldest jumpsuits, and met up with Lee at his house. There was another man there, too: a big, blond fellow called Matt who'd apparently insisted on coming along with us. 

"Come on out to the shed," Lee said, once the introductions had been completed. "We need to get you two kitted out." 

It was when I saw the equipment in the shed that I realised just how different this would be from last time. It was all clean and well-maintained, but it was clearly much older, simpler gear than we were used to. The two men dug out helmets and overalls that fitted us, and pulled on well-worn overalls of their own. 

Lee's flyer was parked nearby — a battered-looking freight model, with more potholing gear in its cargo compartment. It was only a few minutes' flight to the cave entrance, and we set down on the hillside overlooking the village. When Zoë came out of the flyer she stopped and leaned against the side of the hatch. 

"Are you OK?" I said. 

Zoë nodded. "Just another déjà-vu moment. I keep thinking there ought to be more visible air pollution. I was picturing what it would be like if all those chimneys were putting out smoke." She straightened up. "Let's get on with it." 

The hillside was a mass of tumbled rock and patches of grass, and it was easy to see why no-one had noticed the cave entrance until the last century. I only knew it was there because it was surrounded by a tumbledown fence marked by a faded warning notice. Inside the fence was what looked like a crack in the ground, barely big enough to admit a person. A polished metal loop had been set into the rock just above it. 

"Right," Matt said, attaching a rope to the loop. "It's about ten metres down. Have you used a descender before?" 

"Once," I said doubtfully. "And it didn't look like that." 

"Well, you just thread the rope through like this." He ran the rope through the device. "Now clip it onto your harness. That's right. Keep your right hand on the rope. Use your left hand to push off from the rocks." He reached out and turned on the light on my helmet. "Ready to go?" 

I swallowed. "Ready." 

"Here goes, then." 

Trying to remember my previous caving session with Zoë, I backed cautiously into the crack. In a few moments, there was nothing under my feet, and I was slowly gliding down the rope into a dark pit. At one point my hand slipped on the rope, and I slid helplessly down a couple of metres until I regained control. I took the rest of the descent very cautiously, until I felt more or less solid ground beneath my boots. 

Once I was sure I'd reached the bottom of the pit, I unhooked myself from the rope and called up to the others. A few moments later, the distant daylight was blotted out as Zoë climbed into the pit and lowered herself down the rope. She took it rather more quickly than I had, I thought, and landed with something of a bump. 

"Down OK," she called, and unhooked herself from the rope. 

"Isn't Matt coming?" I asked, after some time had passed and there was no sign of the other two joining us. "Or Lee?" 

Zoë shook her head, sending the light of her lamp dancing across the cave walls. "We agreed there wasn't any need for him to come. Once you get down into it, he said it's a very simple cave." 

We turned slowly, looking the cave over. Again, I couldn't help thinking how different it was from the last time we'd been potholing. The cave system we'd been in then had been large and elaborate, with cavers going in and out of it almost every day for a hundred or more years. This was just one small cave, but it was somehow a much wilder place. The floor was an uneven layer of silt, littered with rocks and other debris that had fallen in over the years — including what looked like the bones of several different wild animals. The walls were rough, jagged rock, broken up by deep cracks. As we continued to turn, what looked like a low archway came into view. 

"That must be the original way in," Zoë said. "If this really is Goody Ricker's cave, of course." 

"How do we tell?" 

"Take a look round, I suppose." Zoë pulled a camera out of her overalls. "The floor level probably isn't the same now as it was then, so make sure to check everywhere." 

We made several circuits of the cave, the silt sucking at our boots as we walked. There were various scratches on the walls that might once have been mystic diagrams, or perhaps just idle graffiti. 

"Look at that," Zoë said, the first time we got to the archway. She was shining her torch through it. Beyond was a chaos of fallen rocks, but between us and the rocks were what looked like two or three crudely-cut steps. 

"Someone must have made those steps, mustn't they?" I said. "So people used this cave until the entrance fell in. And then no-one came here until they found the way down from the top." 

"Yes." Zoë cautiously reached out to the rockfall, but drew her hand back as she dislodged a pebble. "I wonder why they didn't dig it out again?" 

"Maybe they stopped using it before it fell in." 

Zoë nodded. "Maybe." 

Once we'd explored and photographed the cave as thoroughly as we could, given the time and equipment we had, we returned to where the rope was hanging down. 

"We're ready to come up," Zoë called. 

"OK," Matt called back. "Go ahead." 

Zoë threaded the rope through her ascender, and clipped it to her harness. Taking hold of the rope, she hoisted herself off the ground— 

There was a ghastly cracking and scraping sound overhead, a blistering curse from Matt, and suddenly the rope went slack. As Zoë tumbled backwards onto the floor of the cave, a huge chunk of rock smacked into the silt right where she'd been standing, followed by a rain of earth and smaller pebbles that rattled off our helmets. 

"Zoë!" I called, running over to her. "Are you OK?" 

"I think so." Zoë sat up. In the light of my lamp she looked pale, scared half to death, and her hands were shaking. "That was close." 

"Can you hear me down there?" Lee's voice called down, sounding panicky. 

"Yes," I called back. 

"No broken bones," Zoë added. 

"That's good. Now we need to get you out. Matt, do you think we can rig some sort of anchor and get a rope down to them?" 

Matt answered, but quietly enough that I couldn't hear him. I got the impression that the two of them wanted a private chat. 

"Give me a hand," Zoë said, reaching out to me. 

I helped her to her feet, and we took a look at the rock. It was clearly part of the rim of the hole — the part to which the rope had been attached. That meant, even if Matt and Lee did have a spare rope, they wouldn't have anything up there to tie it to. 

"We're lucky it didn't come off while we were going down," I said. 

"Yes, very lucky." Zoë detached her ascender from the rope. "It can't have been obviously loose, or they'd never have let us put our weight on it in the first place." 

Silence fell for a little. It was broken by the sound of Lee's flyer starting up, and then receding. 

"Hello down there," Matt called. "Still OK?" 

"We're fine," Zoë replied. "What's happening?" 

"Lee's gone to see if he's got anything we can use to get you out. If he can't he'll fetch the Mountain Rescue guys. D'you think you'll be all right down there for a bit?" 

"We'll be fine." 

I clambered onto the fallen rock, and sat down. Zoë hopped up beside me. 

"I hope they don't take too long," she said. "We'll freeze." 

"Well, we won't starve." I dug in my overalls. "I brought some Kendal Mint Cubes." 

"We shouldn't eat them yet. We could be down here for hours." 

"I hope we aren't." I shuddered. "I keep thinking something's going to come out of the cracks and creep up on us." 

"Hmmm." Zoë was clearly turning some private idea over in her mind. When she spoke again, it was quietly enough that Matt, up at the top of the shaft, wouldn't have been able to make out her words. "If this is Goody Ricker's cave, and she was in contact with the reptile people, there must be a secret entrance to their chambers somewhere here. Except I don't see how we could find it, if they didn't want us to. You remember how good their camouflage can be." 

I nodded. "And if she wasn't in contact with the reptiles, or this isn't her cave at all, we wouldn't find a secret entrance because there isn't one." 

"So coming here hasn't really helped us at all." 

"Except..." I hesitated. "Zoë, you know you've been getting those déjà-vu feelings?" 

"Yes." 

"You haven't had any in here, have you?" 

"No." She turned toward me. "What conclusion do you draw from this, Lily?" 

"I don't know. Only I thought if this was Goody Ricker's cave, you'd know it, somehow." 

"You think whenever I feel funny it's some signal that we're on the right track? From a higher power?" She shook her head. "I wish I'd never told you what that silly girl said about me having second sight. There's no such thing." 

"Well, there's something going on round here," I said. "And it's something to do with you." 

"Why do you think that?" 

"That portrait," I said slowly. "It can't be a coincidence." 

In the light of my torch, Zoë's expression hardened. "I can only think of one explanation for that," she said. "And it's a pretty unsatisfactory one." 

"Let's hear it." 

"Well." Zoë took a deep breath. "You say I look identical to that Grey Lady picture. On the face of it the most likely explanation is that the picture was faked to look like me, but Mr Julius says that's been ruled out. When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. If the picture hasn't been made to look like me, I must have been made to look like the picture." 

I shook my head. "What do you mean, made to look like the picture?" 

"Genetically, of course," Zoë said impatiently. "Possibly my genes were manually sequenced to match her appearance, but if the resemblance is as close as you say it's more likely that a sample of her DNA has survived and I was cloned from it." 

"OK. That would explain why you look like the picture, I suppose. But why would anyone want to make you look like the picture?" 

"That's where it's unsatisfactory. Witchcraft and cloning... I wonder if someone's trying to set up a Dexter-Ward transfer?" 

"What's one of them?" 

"It's where you clone someone and then download their mind into the clone's. In theory the clone's brain is similar enough to the original that you can just copy the neuron structure from one to the other. Of course, the clone's mind gets overwritten." She tapped her hard hat. "Which would be my mind, in this case." 

"But... is that even possible?" 

"It's a pretty fringe idea. I don't think anyone could get it to work with current technology. But with alien tech... who knows? Anyway, it's the only hypothesis I've got so far." 

"But wouldn't they need the other person to be alive?" 

"No. Just as long as they had her brain. Or a sufficiently detailed scan of it from when she was alive, for preference." 

"It doesn't sound at all likely," I said. 

"Whatever remains, however improbable," Zoë repeated flatly. 

"What about time travel?" I suggested. "Suppose someone paints the picture of you now and sends it back in time?" 

"Or sends me back in time so the picture can be painted." Zoë shook her head. "That's even less probable than the picture being a fake." 

"You mean time travel's impossible?" 

Zoë gave me a long look. I got the feeling the question was touching on some secret she knew, and wasn't allowed to tell me. 

"Not quite," she said eventually. "There are theories of the universe that allow for it. But I'm not aware of any that allow a practical time machine to be created with present-day technology. You'd need black holes and exotic matter and so on." 

"You said the transfer thingy was impossible, too." 

"Yes, but it's the difference between being sure there isn't a cat in a room, and being sure there isn't an elephant. If there was a time machine anywhere in the Solar System you'd get gravity waves and radiation surges. It would be detected everywhere." She made a dismissive gesture. "I know my cloning theory's unlikely, but honestly, it makes several orders of magnitude more sense than time travel." 

She jumped down off the rock, with a "Brr," and began to pace up and down. 

"They're taking their precious time up there," she muttered. "Maybe it would be quicker to dig out the original entrance." She walked over to the archway and directed the beam of her lamp at the fallen rocks. "I don't think we ought to risk it, though." There was a rattle of falling pebbles. "Hang on, what's..." 

The air was filled with a high-pitched, oscillating whine, and a new light was shining on the rock from behind us. We turned, to see a small drone-copter hovering in mid-air. 

"Hello," I said. "Who are you?" 

"Mountain Rescue," the drone said. Or rather, it was relaying its operator's voice. "What's your situation?" 

"Ready for extraction," Zoë said. "No injuries." 

"OK, we'll send a grav-lift down. Please stand near the edge of the cave." 

The drone shot upwards and in moments was lost to sight. A few minutes later, with a slightly lower and louder hum, a pole, about two metres long and five centimetres in diameter, descended into the cave. A globe at its top end emitted light, and there was a round platform at its base. A man in a high-visibility suit was holding onto two handlebars which protruded from the pole near its top. Above the pole, an electrical flex trailed upwards. 

As the grav-lift approached the rock, it jiggled a little sideways and set down with a squelch in the silt. 

"I can take one at a time," the man said. "Who's first?" 

Zoë pushed me forward. "Take Lily. There's something I need to show you before we go." 

I climbed onto the other side of the platform, and clung on to the man as it rose slowly out of the cave. We emerged into what, considered objectively, was a gloomy, overcast day, though it was almost painfully bright to my eyes. As well as Lee's flyer, there was another, newer-looking flyer parked nearby, with Mountain Rescue markings. 

The grav-lift clicked into a landing cradle that had been set up near the flyers, and I stepped off onto solid earth. Almost at once it lifted again, moved slowly across the heather, and then disappeared once more into the ground. It reappeared after a few more minutes — just long enough for me to start wondering what was going on — with Zoë as its passenger, and landed again in the cradle. 

"Thank you," Zoë said. 

"Sorry we had to put you to all this trouble," I added. 

"That's what we're here for," the man said. "I'll send word to the Procurator Fiscal's office regarding the other matter. They'll no doubt send someone out here." 

Zoë nodded. "I expect so." 

Matt, who'd been standing at a distance, took a few steps forward. "Excuse me," he said. "About this accident." 

"Yes?" the man said. 

"Well, before the rock broke I thought I saw a purple flash," he said. "And that looks like a burn mark." He pointed to the raw, newly-exposed edge of the hole. "What do you think?" 

"I'll take a closer look," the man said. He pulled a bulky pair of telepresence goggles on, and the gloves that went with them. The drone rose up from the grass, crossed to where the edge of the hole had fallen away, and glided up and down. 

"Yes, you could be right," the man went on. "That could be melted metal at the bottom of that crack." A circle of green dots surrounded an area of the rockface. "I'll have to report this to the PSA. We could be looking at a case of attempted murder here." 

"Talking of technology that looks like magic," Zoë said, as the drone returned to its operator. "Anyone a few hundred years ago would think he was a witch. He's got a familiar, and he even flies around on something that looks like a broomstick." 

"I never thought of it that way." I watched as the drone landed and shut down its antigravs. "What was the other matter? The one that's got to be raised with the Procurator?" 

"You know you said the original cave entrance probably fell in when people had stopped coming there?" Zoë said. "Well, I think at least one person was present when it fell." 

I felt sick. "You don't mean..." 

"There was a visible bone in that rockfall," Zoë said. "From the size and condition I'd say it was probably a human thigh. The probable implication is that when that ceiling collapsed, someone was under it at the time."


	11. Purposeful Accident

> _Accidents will occur in the best-regulated families._
> 
> — Charles Dickens,  David Copperfield

All four of us had to stay on the hillside in our overalls, while the police came and gave the site the once-over. They agreed that it looked as if something explosive had been wedged into a crack in the rock, and set off some time after we'd gone down there. Whether by design or chance, the rock hadn't actually fallen until Zoë had begun to put her weight on it. 

Once they'd surveyed where the explosion had been, the Mountain Rescue man and one of the police officers disappeared into the hole on the grav-lift. When they came out again, there was a lot more discussion, but it seemed that they agreed with Zoë about the bone she'd seen being human. 

"The field forensic team are on their way," one of the officers said. "They'll take a Carbon-14 reading and say how old the bone is. We'll see if we need statements from you then, if you don't mind waiting." 

It was the sort of polite request you didn't refuse, so Zoë and I went and sat on a rock a little way away, looking out over the distant village. 

"You never said what you found out yesterday at the archive," I said. "Except the bit about finding the cave here." 

"Well, there wasn't a lot to find out," Zoë said. 

"But you must have looked at hundreds of books and films and so on!" 

"Just because someone looks in a lot of places doesn't mean they'll find what they want." Zoë put her fingers to her temples. "I started with Welford's _Reminiscences_. That was mainly him moaning about how sinful his parishoners were. All it says about Goody Ricker is that everyone was sure she did away with McConnell." 

"The previous presbyter?" I put in, to show I was keeping up. 

"That's right. Only the body was never found, and it's very difficult to get a prosecution without a body. Also, I got the feeling a lot of people thought things might be a bit easier without McConnell." 

"You mean he was very strict?" 

"Welford says 'zealous in the faith,' but I think it comes to much the same thing. Anyway, he kept an eye on Goody Ricker and seemed reasonably sure she was consorting with the Devil and so on, but he couldn't actually pin anything on her either." 

"Then why was he — why was everyone — so sure she was a witch?" 

"Because they were all ignorant barbarians, or as good as. I'd hate to have lived in that time." Zoë shivered, and rubbed her hands together. "Anyway, I followed the story down the years. Goody Ricker was pretty much forgotten until Walter Macrae published _Myths and Legends of Scotland_ in 1867. The locals told him what they remembered about Goody Ricker, and he put the story in his book. There are a few mentions of her later on: in the 1930s there was a news article about some idiots trying to start a coven in her memory and getting threatened with the old witchcraft laws. And in 1968 they found the cave and decided it was hers." 

"Why?" 

"The potholers found a few bits and pieces, apparently. A pair of shoes from about the right period, and a bronze cross. I don't think the site's ever been investigated systematically." 

"And the Grey Lady?" I asked. "Did you find anything about her?" 

Zoë spread her hands. "There's almost nothing. Just a painting, and a few vague hints. Mind you, she's from about the right time too. You remember they said it was thought to be Lady Janet who painted the portrait? She gets mentioned in Welford's _Reminiscences_ a couple of times. I don't think he liked her very much." 

She paused. 

"I didn't find one single mention of that rhyme," she said. "It's just the sort of thing that Macrae would have put in his book, but he didn't. I even went back to his original notes — they've been digitised, which was quite lucky. So: If you eliminate the impossible, etcetera, there's only one explanation for the rhyme. I must have made it up." 

"OK," I said, though I wasn't at all sure either of us believed it. 

⁂

We were left sitting about for ages until the forensic team arrived, and then for ages more while they did their investigation. They went all over the cave mouth with their devices, and then started sending drones and grav-lifts down into the cave itself. Zoë watched the whole operation avidly, continually coming up with guesses about what this or that piece of equipment might be. 

After a while, another officer approached us, and told us that statements would be required after all. One by one, we were taken into one of the police flyers and had our stories taken down. 

"I asked them what they'd found," Zoë said, after we'd both been questioned and we were waiting for the police to finish with Lee. "The bones are old. Four hundred years or more." 

It didn't take me long to draw the obvious conclusion. "You mean they're from Goody Ricker's time?" 

"It's highly likely. Who knows? Maybe we've even found Giles McConnell." 

"It would fit the story, wouldn't it?" I said. "He was last seen looking for Goody Ricker. He went to her cave, and the entrance collapsed on him, and that's why the body was never found." 

Zoë nodded. "Until now. It would fit the story. Anyway, the police aren't so interested in the bones any more." 

"But they took our statements, so... that falling rock? It was deliberate?" 

"Almost certainly. I can give you a good guess at what they'll have found, too. You remember Matt said he saw a purple flash?" 

"Yes." 

"Given the circumstances of the case, that suggests the use of a particular element to me. Atomic number 37, atomic weight 85.47. Named for the characteristic colour of its emission spectrum." She paused, in case I wanted to guess. "Give up? It's rubidium." 

"You mean those stolen batteries?" 

"Right. If you could get one to give up all its stored energy in one go you'd get a reasonable explosion. But using a piece of equipment costing thousands of credits as a cheap bomb — the _waste_ of it!" 

"They must have done it to make a point," I said. "Don't mess with us, we can throw away all that money just to give you a hard time." 

"Yes. That's the motive and the means. As for who had the opportunity: Anyone who knew we were coming up here, who had access to basic electronic supplies, and could get here before us and set the trap." 

"It's got to be someone who was in the pub last night, hasn't it, then?" 

"Or someone in the pub told someone else." Zoë broke off as Lee emerged from the police flyer. "Are we free to go now?" 

Lee nodded. "Finally. Let's get our stuff picked up and get out of here." 

⁂

Once we'd got back from our caving expedition, we were hungry enough that we went straight to the _Leaping Fish_ for what was, by then, a very late lunch. 

"Zoë," I said, as we were finishing our dessert. "I've been thinking." 

"About anything in particular?" Zoë asked. She was bent over her plate, concentrating on making sure no stray fragment of apple crumble had escaped her spoon. 

"About what happened up at the cave." 

Zoë looked up sharply, and put a finger to her lips. "Not here, Lily," she said, in a low voice. "It's almost certain we were overheard here last night. I don't want a repeat." 

"You're really taking this very—" I began, but was cut off by the arrival of a barman. 

"Excuse me," he said. "Doctor Zoë Heriot?" 

"That's me," Zoë said. 

"Voice message for you." 

Zoë hurried away to take the call. I wondered how whoever was calling knew she'd be here. Maybe she'd left word with UNISYC where she could be contacted — or maybe it was an emergency, and they were calling everywhere they could think until they got to her. Or perhaps it wasn't UNISYC at all. 

My speculation was interrupted by the return of Zoë herself, looking pale and shocked. 

"There's been an accident," she said. "Moira's been hurt — she's in hospital. I need to get there as quickly as possible." 

Hurriedly, we settled up for the meal, and set off for the guesthouse at something close to a run. 

"What happened?" I asked. 

"Groundcar accident. She was airlifted to the Ross Foundation medcentre. I don't have more details." 

"So that's where we're going?" 

"Right. I **knew** she knew something. Now someone's tried to kill her before she can talk." 

"You're serious?" I asked. 

"I think it's far more likely than— _chel!_ Why do I keep doing that?" 

We'd taken the wrong turning again, and ended up in the dead end with the builder's yard. It was a simple enough mistake, but Zoë must have been really upset by now; I'd never heard her swear before. 

"As I was saying," she said, once we were back on track, "There are hardly any groundcars around here. The odds of one hitting someone must be pretty low anyway. The odds of it hitting our best potential witness... well, do the arithmetic." 

By now I didn't have breath to spare for anything other than running, and we didn't say anything more until we got back to the guesthouse. I'd expected us to jump straight in the hopper and fly off, but instead Zoë, with a breathless "wait here," went inside. After a couple of minutes, she came out again, and we climbed into the hopper. 

"Wouldn't it be quicker to take the T-Mat?" I said, as the hopper shot upwards at maximum acceleration. 

"It's not safe for either of us," Zoë said. She paused briefly as the hopper automatically banked for a turn. "I checked with you-know-who to see if they had any more information about Moira. And to get confirmation that she actually had been injured. You see, it was possible that there hadn't been an accident at all, and the enemy, whoever they are, had sent me the message to lure me away. But it's true. She walked out in front of a robo-forester — it couldn't stop quickly enough to avoid an accident." 

"Walked out?" I repeated. 

"Maybe she was pushed," Zoë said darkly. "Anyway, I said it was vital that they should T-Mat some soldiers over to the medcentre and put a guard on her." 

By now we had gained enough height that we were among the clouds. It wasn't possible to see the ground, or anything else, much, except in brief glimpses. It was like being trapped in a constantly-shifting maze. 

"How is she?" I asked. 

Zoë's expression was grim. "She hadn't regained consciousness when I called. When we get there we'll have to stay with her night and day until she's able to talk." She took a deep breath. "What were you going to say before I got the news?" 

"Oh." It took me a moment or two to think back to then. "I remember. It was about the bomb at the cave. If it was made with those rubidium batteries, then it must have been set by the gang we're looking for, mustn't it?" 

"Almost certainly." 

"Then they must know who we are. But I don't see how they found out." 

"They probably overheard me talking to Moira. If we can be eavesdropped in the pub once, why not twice?" 

"I suppose so. Anyway, that was all it was." 

We flew on for a bit in silence. Then Zoë said sharply "Hello, what's this?" 

"What's what?" 

"There's another flier of some kind on the same course as us. I don't recognise the transponder code, but it's a civilian prefix rather than military." 

"You think it's someone trying to get there before us?" 

Zoë shook her head. "If they wanted to do that, all they'd need to do is use T-Mat. I think they're following us. I'll change course and see if they do the same." There was a pause, and then she said, sharply, "You have control, Lily." 

"I have control," I said, grasping the joystick and putting my feet on the pedals. "What's the matter?" 

"The navcomp won't disengage. It's asking for a password — and I didn't set one. You didn't, did you?" 

"Of course not. Is it a UNISYC thing?" 

"I'll call them and ask... no, the comms panel's asking for a password, too. Well, I'm not going to put up with that." Zoë's fingers were dancing across the control panel. "I'd like to see the stupid computer that can get the better of _me_." 

I wasn't sure how much control, if any, I had over the flier, and there was precious little to see from the cockpit, but I tried to concentrate on the instruments. The local scanner was showing no other traffic, except for the transponder of the craft that was following us: a few hundred metres lower than we were, and perhaps a kilometre behind. 

"Automatic lockout?" Zoë muttered at the computer. "I'll give you 'automatic lockout.'" 

The sounds of keyboard tapping gave way to the clicks of an access panel being opened, then the sharp _crack_ of breaking plastic. With a despairing squeak, the navcomp went blank, and a brief shudder passed through the flyer. 

"Manual control restored," Zoë said triumphantly. "And let that be a lesson to uppity navcomps everywhere. Try varying our course and see what happens." 

I steered to the left, then back to the right. The dot in the local scanner faithfully made the same changes to its course. 

"Yes, they're definitely following us," Zoë said. 

I gave her a worried look. "Now what do we do? Can you get us to the medcentre without the navcomp?" 

"I could plot a route, but I'm not sure if we could follow it in these conditions. We might fly into a storm — or a mountain. And comms are still locked out, so we can't call for help. How are you on manual landings?" 

"A bit rusty," I said. The last time I'd had to do a fully-manual landing was for my driving test. 

"That'll have to do. Take us down." 

I swallowed hard. "I'll do what I can," I said, and pushed the joystick forward. The clouds seemed to be thickening all the time, and I couldn't see the ground: only a fuzzy false-colour diagram on the radar monitor. It was probably good enough to stop us colliding with a mountain, but barely adequate when it came to finding somewhere to set down safely. 

"Shouldn't we put the transponder in emergency mode?" I asked. 

"Normally, yes," Zoë said. "But someone's already sabotaged the navcomp and the communications. The transponder's almost certainly been compromised as well." She was rifling the hopper's storage compartments — those she could reach from her seat — as she spoke, and shoving what she could find into her pockets. "How close are we to a landing?" 

I pointed to the radar display. "That flat area looks like our best hope." 

"It's probably a lake. Or a bog. I won't argue: you're the one who's in charge of the landing." She started pulling more access panels off the inside of the cockpit. "If we get down safely, be ready to run for it." 

There was still nothing but cloud visible on the screen. We might have been two metres above the ground, or two kilometres. I concentrated on the radar screen, trying to keep the flat patch centred as best I could. As it rushed up to meet us, I hit the airbrakes, pulled gently back on the joystick, and hoped.


	12. On The Run

> _Avoid the moor in those hours of darkness when the powers of evil are exalted._
> 
> — Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,  The Hound of the Baskervilles

I didn't see the ground until a few seconds before we touched down. It was flat, black, and gleaming: shallow water, or mud. The touchdown itself was a far cry from the navcomp's usual graceful efforts. We hit the water with a thump that jarred my teeth and sent up a huge splash. The hopper lurched and bounced — for a moment I thought it was going to flip over or come apart — then touched down again. Black water and silt lashed against the windscreen as the craft skidded across the surface, hit something with a bone-shaking crunch, jerked to the left, and finally shuddered to a halt, listing noticeably to starboard. 

"Any landing you can walk away from," I said, my voice shaking. I realised I was still hanging onto the joystick for dear life, and forced myself to let go. 

"Good work, Lily," Zoë said. Her voice was rigidly controlled, but her knuckles were white where she was gripping her seat. "I couldn't have done any better myself. Now we need to get out of here before that other flier comes looking for us." 

She pulled off another access panel and extracted a sturdy-looking orange cylinder. 

"Flight recorder module," she said, and added it to her bulging pockets. "Want to give the transponder a go now?" 

I flipped the switch to the EMERGENCY setting. The only result was a smell of burning, a muffled _crack_ from somewhere at the back of the hopper, and the control board went entirely dead. 

"It was booby-trapped," I said. "You were right." 

Zoë nodded. "I usually am. Come on, we need to get away from here." 

Not only was the smell of burning getting worse, but the tilt was increasing all the time. Black water was starting to ooze in around the doors on both sides. The normal door controls were dead, but the emergency release still worked; we emerged into gloom, fog and freezing cold mud. 

Our surroundings, which had appeared on the radar as a flattish patch of land, were a wilderness of pools, channels, and tussocks of rough grass. Visibility couldn't have been much more than twenty metres. Behind us, the nose of the hopper was disappearing horribly quickly into the bog, and the tail section was ablaze, burning with a lurid violet hue. 

"Another rubidium bomb?" I said. 

Zoë nodded. "Triggered by the distress beacon. Now run!" 

The ground wasn't at all suitable for running, but we struggled through the calf-deep mud at the best stagger we could manage. It was horribly hard going, but whenever we weren't moving we'd start to sink into the foul-smelling ooze. I remember thinking that it was lucky we were still wearing the rough clothes and boots we'd used for potholing, because we'd have lost our normal shoes before we'd gone three paces. 

By the time we got to ground that would bear our weight, the hopper was just a purple glow in the mist behind us. By that point we were both pretty much done in, so we paused to get our breath back. Once we were breathing normally, Zoë put her finger to her lips. We both listened, but all we could hear was trickling water. It felt as if we were cut off from the world, in a dome of mist. 

"Now what?" I whispered. 

"Keep moving," Zoë said. "If we stay in one place it'll be easier for them to catch us. They've set down already." 

"How do you know?" 

Zoë gave me an impatient look. "Because we can't hear their engines, of course. Unless they've flown away, but why do that after following us all this distance?" 

"OK." I squared my shoulders, and set off, heading for where the ground seemed driest. It was still hard going; rather than plunging into a bog, the hazard this time was tripping over rocks or tussocks. The ground was so uneven that we couldn't get a decent rhythm going. The damp and the mist were settling on our clothes and hair, and the air was feeling colder all the time. 

"There must be people looking for us," I said. "I mean, apart from that other flier. Going down suddenly like that without sending any messages." 

"Yes," Zoë said thoughtfully. "At least, I'd expect the emergency services to investigate and find what's left of the hopper. I'm not so confident about them finding us." 

"What about you-know-who?" I asked. "I'm sure they could find us, if they wanted to." 

"If they wanted to," Zoë repeated. "They've really taken a very hands-off approach so far. It would be just like them to throw us in at the deep end and let us sink or swim. We're not what's important to them, remember. What they want is that alien fossil." 

"Then shouldn't you be looking for it?" I expostulated. "All you've done since we've been here is look up ancient history!" 

"Whoever's got it has blown up twelve thousand credits' worth of rubidium batteries trying to kill me. That suggests I'm doing something right." Zoë walked on for a bit, then added. "I've no idea _why_ researching historical witchcraft is making them so nervous, but it obviously is. So I'm going to keep on doing it." 

We kept on walking, all the time feeling colder and damper and more miserable. The emergency equipment we'd salvaged from the hopper didn't have any navigational aids apart from a compass, so we had to rely on that and the slope of the ground. The dim daylight dimmed even further. And several times, just on the edge of hearing, I was sure I could hear footsteps that weren't ours. 

After a particularly strenuous climb, Zoë slumped onto a rock. 

"Have you still got those Kendal Mint Cubes, Lily?" she asked. 

I dug them out of my pocket, and we shared them out. They were better than nothing, but I still felt exhausted and hungry. There was a stream nearby, and Zoë had some water purification tablets, so we were able to drink, too. 

"It's funny, isn't it?" Zoë said. "We think we're so civilised. But a couple of days of this and we'd have to get our food just the same way cavemen did. Civilisation can be very fragile." 

"We're a bit better off than cavemen," I said. "We've got your compass." 

"And torches." Zoë passed me one. I turned it on, but the weak daylight was still too bright for it to make a difference, so I switched it off again. 

"If we keep walking we've got to get to somewhere sooner or later, haven't we?" I said. 

"I suppose so." Zoë stood up, then suddenly gripped my arm. "Lily!" she hissed. "Look over there!" 

I looked. In the middle distance, a vague human silhouette was visible. It quickly disappeared into the swirling fog, but as it did so, we heard the sound of an owl calling. It was answered from somewhere further away, on the other side of us. 

Zoë put her finger to her lips, and pointed us in a direction somewhere between where the two calls had come from. We crept forwards, trying to keep close to rocks that might serve as cover if we were in danger of being spotted. Luckily we didn't have to worry about giving ourselves away by treading on a twig; the vegetation didn't stretch to anything other than grass and the occasional clump of heather. Now and again we caught sight of what might have been other people, moving slowly and purposefully through the mist, or heard owls hooting that we were sure weren't any sort of bird. Night was falling fast by now, and we had to risk using our torches in brief flashes to see where we were going. 

Suddenly, in this world of rocks, heather and rugged slopes, something loomed up ahead of us that was clearly man-made. It was an earth bank, straight as a laser beam, its sides precisely smoothed. 

We crawled up the bank on hands and knees, keeping low so we wouldn't be silhouetted against the sky. At the top, the bank was flat, level and narrow, its surface dotted with regularly-spaced, crumbling concrete pillars. 

"It's an old maglev line," Zoë whispered. "If we follow it we're sure to get somewhere." 

As she spoke, an owl hooted from the far side of the embankment. We hastily slid a couple of metres down the near side, and got to our feet. Zoë pulled out her compass, but before she could get a bearing, the hooting stopped and was replaced by the scream of a whistle. It was answered from the fog behind us. 

I turned, and ran along the embankment. Zoë shoved her compass back into her pocket, and was seconds behind me. 

We stayed with the old maglev line for about twenty minutes; to begin with, the whistling seemed almost on our heels, but it got further and further away. Gradually, as the ground rose up around us, the embankment sank down to ground level and eventually became a cutting. A few hundred metres further on, we came to a dead end: the maglev had entered a tunnel, but it had been uncompromisingly walled-off. Wearily, we clambered up the side of the cutting. At the top, our luck held; there was a track, overgrown and cracked but still showing traces of tarmac. The uphill direction was closest to where we'd been heading, so we took it. 

As the slope of the track began to ease, something slowly appeared out of the darkness and mist ahead of us. At first it was just a vague, shadowy blur. As we got closer, I thought I could pick out the turrets and battlements of a castle, then the jagged outlines of a ruinous mansion. It turned out to be neither. What eventually emerged from the murk was an assortment of single-storey concrete buildings, clustering around a dome three times their height. The buildings themselves were obviously abandoned. Blotches of rust dotted the concrete like fungi on a decaying stump. The windows were boarded or gaping holes. Moss, looking almost black in the dim light of our torches, grew from cracks in the structure. 

"Where are we?" I asked. 

"I think this has to be the Chasehope experimental power plant," Zoë said. "It was built about eighty years ago to house a prototype generator. The experiment wasn't successful and they shut the project down after a few years. That sort of thing happened quite a lot back then." 

"You think we can take shelter here?" 

"Let's hope so." 

The door was secured with a heavy steel grating, but we walked around the outside of the building and soon found a ragged hole that had once been a window. Zoë put her torch in her mouth and clambered through, then gestured to me to follow. 

The room we arrived in had obviously been thoroughly stripped. Holes in the walls showed where conduits for power or data cables had run, and at one end was a larger hole in the floor that looked as if it might once have been a drain. Fragments of concrete were scattered around the floor. 

"Well, here we are," Zoë said. She paused, took a deep breath, and went on. "So why did you bring us here, Lily?"


	13. Saboteur

> _Whate'er the talents, or howe'er designed,  
>  We hang one jingling padlock on the mind._
> 
> — Alexander Pope,  The Dunciad

I stared at Zoë in astonishment. "I don't know what you mean!" 

"Really?" In the light of my torch, Zoë's face looked preternaturally calm. Once again, I felt like some factor in an equation, except this time the equation was one she'd solved. "You've been trying to get me here ever since we got in the hopper." She began to pace, and raised her index finger. "Firstly, the locked-in coordinates in the hopper navcomp were for this location. Only two people had physical access to that navcomp: You and me. I didn't do it, so it had to be you. By the same token, you were the one who wired that rubidium bomb into the transponder." 

"But I didn't have a rubidium bomb!" I protested. "You saw that." 

"You could have had it in your pocket. It wouldn't have been very big. Or maybe while I was inside calling the medcentre you signalled to whatever confederate of yours planned this and they fitted the bomb." 

"That's crazy! When would I have planned all that out?" 

"Last night, of course. Or the night before. Talking of which, there's a discrepancy in your account there. You left the pub a long time before I did, but according to you, you got to the bookshop only a few minutes before me. What were you doing all the rest of the time?" 

"I was walking with Keith. He'll vouch for me!" 

Zoë shrugged. "Maybe." She resumed counting on her fingers. "Secondly, when I disengaged the navcomp, you chose the landing site. I spotted a number of possibilities, several of them superior to the one you chose. You decided to land there because it was the closest one to Chasehope. 

"Thirdly, when we got out of the bog, you decided which way to go. That might have been at random. But then, when we started hearing other people, you began to follow their directions." 

"They didn't give any directions!" I protested. 

"They made owl noises, didn't they?" Zoë briefly stopped pacing. "I told you before, I won a prize for pattern recognition. When the owl went 'to-whit' you turned left, and when it went 'to-whoo', you turned right." 

"But I—" I broke off, feeling the blood draining from my face. Now that Zoë had pointed the pattern out to me, it was obvious. Why hadn't I noticed it? 

"So it's no wonder those people following us let us think we'd given them the slip," Zoë said. "They only wanted to make sure we'd come here. Or rather, _you_ only wanted to make sure we'd come here. So now, please will you tell me what I'm here for?" 

For no reason that I could think of, I raised both hands to my mouth and made a strange whooping sound. 

"Was that supposed to be an answer?" Zoë asked, advancing on me. 

"No," Keith's voice said, from behind me. "It was supposed to be a curlew, only Lily didn't get much time to practise." 

I spun round. Keith was standing at the door. Over one of his normal jumpsuits he was wearing a long brown cloak that looked as if it belonged in a historical play. 

"Keith!" I almost screamed. "What are you doing here? What's happening?" 

Keith hurried over to us. "We've not got much time. I'm glad to see you've both made it here. I never doubted you'd make it through the trials." 

"Trials?" I repeated dully. 

"By fire and water," Keith went on. "I hope they'll take that as proof." 

"Proof of what?" Zoë asked. 

"That you really are the chosen vessel of the Grey Lady." He bobbed his head in a kind of bow. "I've done everything I can to further your cause. I hope she'll remember that when she comes." 

"Will you please just tell me what—" Zoë began, but broke off as three more people filed into the room. They were wearing the same sort of robes Keith had, but these had hoods, with some sort of dark mesh across the faces so you couldn't see who they were. 

"You've got to be searched," Keith said, glancing nervously between us and the new arrivals. "Can you turn out your pockets? I'd rather not use force if I can help it." 

"All right," Zoë said resignedly, and produced what was left of the emergency equipment she'd picked up. I added the few bits and pieces I had. 

"Put it on the floor and step back," one of the hooded figures said. I didn't recognise the voice. 

Zoë set the heap of equipment on the floor. While Keith gave us both a perfunctory pat-down, two of the others went through our possessions. They kept our torches and the flight recorder, but returned everything else. 

"Now can you come with us?" Keith said. "Please?" 

It didn't look like we had much of a choice.


	14. A Bird in the Hand

> _We ply the Memory, we load the brain,  
>  Bind rebel Wit, and double chain on chain, _
> 
> — Alexander Pope,  The Dunciad

We were led down a dark, decaying concrete corridor, across a weed-strewn courtyard, and into the largest building of the old power station: the central dome. The doorway looked as if it had originally been protected by huge blast doors, but they were long gone. Most of the opening had been bricked up, leaving a single steel door which now stood open. After we passed through, I heard it being closed and bolted behind us. 

The interior of the dome was a single, echoing chamber. Nearly all the equipment had been in there had long since gone, leaving only holes in the concrete that made it look as if gigantic teeth had been wrenched out. At the centre of the chamber a single metallic column disappeared into the gloom overhead. Unlike every other surface in the power plant, it was free of rust, with nothing more than a tarnished look to its surface. 

Close to the foot of the column was what, at first, I thought was a fire, surrounded by a circle of the robed figures. We were brought into the centre of the circle, close to the fire; I realised it wasn't actually burning logs, but a portable thermoglobe. Either way, I was grateful for the warmth. 

"Sisters and brothers," Keith said, stepping into the circle with us. "Lily Carson is known to us all. I now present Doctor Zoë Heriot, a student of the Craft, who has passed the trials of fire, air, water and earth. I put the question, that she is the true vessel of the Grey Lady of Heriotside." 

"It is true that she has passed the trials," one of the other, hooded figures said. I was sure I recognised her voice, but I couldn't put a name to it. "But that could be by mere chance." 

"Chance?" Keith repeated. "You saw yourselves, she's the very image of the portrait!" 

"Portraits can be faked," a third voice said. 

"You know that's out of the question. You heard Lily's testimony. The portrait's real. And she told us that this lass—" he gestured at Zoë "— has seen demons called up, and has spoken with the serpent-men who walked on this earth long before Atlantis sank." 

I briefly lost track of his speech, because I was trying to make sense of the chaos in my own mind. Until he'd mentioned my 'testimony', I hadn't had the slightest recollection of being in this situation before. But a memory had suddenly popped into my head: I'd been standing in a circle of people, like this. A smaller circle, no more than half a dozen people, but they'd had the same robes. Try as I might, though, I couldn't work out when or where it had happened. 

"What would a scientist know of demons and serpents?" the woman said. "I've checked her records. She's an astrophysicist... and an Elite. The enemy at its worst. She's worth nothing to us." 

"And what would the records say about you, if you checked them?" Keith countered. "Or any of us? Rationalists keep those records — they'd only write down what they believe in." 

"That isn't proof," another of the figures said. 

"Now who's the rationalist?" Keith shot back. "But you know the only way proof can be got. Open her mind and let the Grey Lady return. I for one do not doubt that she shall." 

"Do I get a chance to put my case?" Zoë asked suddenly. 

A couple of the hooded figures jumped. I think they'd been so busy discussing who and what Zoë was that they'd almost forgotten she was there. 

"You may speak," the woman — who seemed to be their leader — said, after a whispered discussion. "But choose your words with care. They may decide your fate." 

"Thank you," Zoë said. "Do you call yourselves a coven, by the way?" 

"That is the proper term." 

"And I thought 'gang' was old-fashioned," Zoë muttered to me. She cleared her throat. "You're probably expecting me to say all your magic is nonsense and I don't believe a word of it. I might have said that once, but I've seen too much. I think, whatever you've got here, it isn't just nonsense. 

"But you're also right that I'm a scientist. If I'm testing a theory I look at all the evidence, not just the bits that support me." She was using the tone of voice she used when she was explaining something to me that she thought ought to be obvious, and was getting annoyed that I couldn't see it. "Some of you think I'm connected with the Grey Lady in some way, and some of you don't. Right?" 

"That's right," Keith said. 

"But what makes you think the Grey Lady was a witch in the first place?" 

"So it is written." 

"Yes, it's written," Zoë said impatiently. "In books like that _Threefold Sword_ thing. That was written three centuries afterwards. Did you try looking for earlier sources? Did you check the archive at Heriotside House? I did. The Grey Lady is nowhere described as having anything to do with witchcraft until Walter Macrae's _Myths and Legends of Scotland_ in 1867, roughly two hundred years after the time she'd have lived. As far as anyone can tell, it's a 'fact' that got in there by mistake — or maybe he just made it up — and it's been copied faithfully into fringe books on witchcraft ever since." 

Keith looked as if Zoë had personally slapped him in the face. "You shouldn't have said that," he said. "You're not helping." 

"Why should I help you? You've been trying to kill me all day. And Moira — you were the ones who arranged that accident for her, weren't you? And you've been using Lily to spy on me ever since I got here. It's not exactly the best advertisment for your philosophy of life. Tell me, do the words 'an ye harm none, do what ye will' mean anything to you?" 

"Those words are not yours to play games with," the leader of the coven said, coldly. I was sure, even more so than before, that I'd met her before somewhere. "This is a time of war. We are fighting for the survival of the Craft. The Goddess has placed power in our hands, and we shall use it to that end." 

"What do you mean, you're fighting? Against what? The witchcraft laws were repealed last century!" 

"Oh, believe me, I know all about laws," the leader said. "It's not laws we're fighting, but the poisoning of the minds of the young. Teaching them that there's nothing but science. No beauty, no mystery, nothing outside dry formulas and logic. We have fought that war for decades." 

"Ever since the testimony of Giles McConnell came into our hands," Keith broke in eagerly. "We know you went to Goody Ricker's cave and sought out his bones. But you didn't find his testimony. We found it, and we keep it safe." 

"Enough," the leader cautioned him. 

Zoë took a deep breath. 

"You said my words could decide my fate," she said. "What's the decision?" 

"That depends on who you truly are, or can become. We will examine your mind. If we find the Grey Lady asleep within, we shall wake her. If you have secret knowledge of the Craft, you will share it with us. If not..." She gave a hands-upward gesture. "You will forget all of this." 

I finally realised that this had already happened to me. Twice, probably. That first evening, when I'd left the pub long before Zoë had, but we'd both got to the fire at the bookshop within minutes of each other. I'd been taken somewhere — probably to where one of the coven lived — and they'd rummaged in my brain to find out what I was doing in the village and why, and then made me forget about the whole thing. 

"Zoë!" I said. "She means it. They did it to me, and made me forget." 

"I know," Zoë said. "I think they can do more, too. I think they can give someone instructions to do something, and make them forget it ever happened afterwards. Exactly the same _modus operandi_ as all the thefts. You had Lily bring us here without knowing why. And you made her sabotage our hopper and forget she'd done it." 

"Hey!" I protested. 

"And you made Moira walk out in front of that robo-forester, just so I'd get in the hopper and come running to her. I suppose you're going to say 'all's fair in love and war,' aren't you? I think it's closer to a war crime. What about the cave? Was it Matt or Lee you brain-controlled into planting the bomb?" 

"Neither," said one of the other members of the coven, pushing back his hood. It was Lee. 

Zoë sighed. "Of course. A field repair tech. You'd have the skills to build the bomb, and access to the components. And you're a caver. I presume you get to choose who does and doesn't go into Goody Ricker's cave?" 

Lee nodded. "We guard it, and make sure no-one goes there who shouldn't." 

"You let me in. Presumably because I might be your Grey Lady. So why did you try to drop half a mountain on my head?" 

"It was one of the trials. If you had the Goddess's favour, you'd survive." 

I stared at him. "You're insane!" 

"And you were doing this in defence of the Craft?" Zoë asked. "I think if someone told me I had to drop a rock on someone to defend the Craft, I'd have serious questions about whether the Craft was worth defending." 

"That," the coven leader said icily, "is _enough_. Secure them." 

The hooded figures closed in on us. We both struggled — I saw Zoë throwing someone twice her size to the floor — but we were overpowered by simple weight of numbers. Both of us were tied to the central pillar, with the same ropes we had used earlier that day for potholing. If Lee was one of the coven, I realised, the flyer following us had probably been his, and he'd brought the ropes. 

Zoë still wasn't giving up without a fight. "Whatever you're doing won't work. The reptile people couldn't read my mind. And I've got a Silenski implant. The police know we're here and—" 

She broke off as the leader of the coven pulled back her hood, and we recognised the features of Constable Selby. 

"They don't," she said. "No-one'll find you here. That's why we chose this place. The dome protects us from spying satellites and drones. It blocks radio, too. And we've handled people with Silenskis before." 

She gestured to her subordinates. They closed around the pillar, joining hands one with another. Slowly and ceremoniously, Constable Selby knelt down and put her thumb on the scanner plate of a box at her feet. The box slid open, and she reached inside. When she stood again, she had a skull in each hand. They weren't human skulls; they looked as if they had come from birds, or birdlike creatures. One was old and polished, the other looked as if it had just been dug up. I knew it was the alien skull we'd been looking for all this time. 

I got the same rush of déjà-vu that I had when Keith had talked about my 'testimony'. They'd used the same skulls then. And I knew what they were going to do next. 

Still holding one skull in each hand, Constable Selby reached out to the robed figures on either side, joining them into an unbroken circle. As the circle closed, both skulls flared briefly with yellow light. 

"Lily Carson, your mind is open to us," Constable Selby intoned. 

I felt an all-too-familiar feeling of vertigo, as if, just for a moment, I was falling unsupported through space. Keith, who was next to Selby in the circle, gave me what he probably meant as an encouraging smile. 

"Zoë Heriot," Constable Selby continued, "your mind is —"


	15. Lost Time

> _Of all affliction taught a lover yet,  
>  'Tis sure the hardest science to forget! _
> 
> — Alexander Pope,  Eloisa to Abelard

I don't remember what happened next. 

Up to that point, every second of what happened in that dome is etched on my mind. But from the moment Constable Selby spoke those words, there's a gap. I've checked and it's only about thirty seconds long, but they're quite important seconds. 

From my point of view, one moment Zoë and I were tied to the column in the dome, with only the light of the thermoglobe. The next, the dome was a blaze of light; there were hovering drones with spotlights, and armoured soldiers with blasters. The coven were lying unconscious at our feet, like so many discarded dolls. Somewhere close at hand I could hear the sound of pulsating antigrav engines. 

"What..." I managed to ask. "What happened?" 

"I don't know." Zoë sounded as dazed as I felt. She raised her voice. "Was it you? Did you do this?" 

"Don't worry, Doctor," a soldier called back. "You're safe now. You'll be evacuated immediately." 

We were swiftly untied from the pillar and led out of the dome. The door had been blown off its hinges and lay to one side, twisted out of shape. Overhead, aircraft were swooping into position, beams of light from their undersides stabbing down into the courtyard. 

The soldier with us spoke briefly into a communicator, and one of the aircraft descended to ground level. Its hatch opened, and we were ushered inside and strapped into a couple of seats. More soldiers took up their positions around us, and the craft leapt into the air again. 

Short as the flight was, by the time we got back to UNISYC's temporary base, we were both yawning. We were taken into a dome fitted out as a barracks module, and told to wait. Zoë asked the soldiers if she could be teleported to the Ross Medcentre to speak to Moira, but she hardly managed to get to the end of her request before falling asleep on one of the mattresses. I didn't manage to stay awake for much longer after that, either. 

⁂

I was woken the following morning by Zoë shaking me. She was wearing the same dark green fatigues as the UNISYC soldiers, and had another set under her arm. 

"Hurry up, Lily," she said. "We've got a debriefing at nine, and I want to T-Mat over to the medcentre and back before then." 

"How come it's suddenly all right to T-Mat?" I asked, as I pulled on the uniform. "You wouldn't use it all the time we were in Balcrynie." 

"I suspected the Balcrynie T-Mat might be the common factor in the thefts," Zoë said. "The idea being that when people came out, they'd have compulsions that they didn't have when they went in. When I found you were under control even though you'd never been through the T-Mat, I abandoned the theory." 

"You might have told me!" I protested. 

"I couldn't risk it. If the enemy were spying on us — which, as we now know, they were — I didn't want to let them overhear us. Or, as it turned out, get it all from your mind." 

"Point taken." I zipped up the borrowed jacket and looked around. "Is there somewhere I can wash my face?" 

Zoë handed me a khaki-coloured tube; it looked like an old-fashioned stick of glue, only larger. "I'm afraid we're living military-style today. What we get is this. You rub it on your face. And be careful: if you use too much it stings." 

Once I'd tidied myself up as best I could, Zoë pretty much force-marched me to the T-Mat dome, the same one where we'd originally arrived. The corporal on duty must have been expecting us, because he waved us into the cubicle. Reality flickered, and we were suddenly in a broad, gently curving corridor, lit with a pinkish light. An orderly brought us to the ward where Moira was being treated. 

I think we were both shocked to see how poorly Moira looked. Her injuries, the orderly had assured us, were superficial — but between the bandages, the stitches, and the swollen bruises, she was a far cry from how she'd been at the pub the last time we saw her. At first I thought she was asleep, but her eyes opened as we approached. 

"Hello," Zoë said. 

"Hello," Moira replied, in a faint voice. "Good of you to come. You're the first." 

"You look—" Zoë began, and broke off. 

"— Dreadful. I know. Don't worry. They say it looks worse than it is." She tried to smile. "Might end up with a few scars. What happened?" 

"You don't remember anything?" 

"Nothing." 

Zoë took a deep breath. "You were hit by a robo-forester." 

"Stupid." Moira closed her eyes. "Must not've been looking where I was going." 

"Moira, it wasn't your fault, and I'm truly sorry this has happened to you," Zoë said. "If there's anything I can do..." 

Moira opened her eyes, and looked at me. "You're with Keith now, aren't you? Tell him about... about this. I think he should know." 

"We'll tell him," I said. That was all I could bring myself to say. 

"Thanks." She closed her eyes again. "Tired now. Thanks for coming." 

"Goodbye, Moira," Zoë said. She added something else under her breath that I couldn't catch. Then, her face a rigid, emotionless mask, she slipped her hand into mine and we left the room. 

"They did that to her just because I was fond of her," Zoë said, as we walked back along the corridor. Her hand was gripping mine tightly enough that I found myself worrying she might draw blood. "If I got the chance I'd be happy to see them all burned at the stake. Or Demolished. Or sent to the disintegration chamber." She relaxed her grip by a fraction. "So it's probably a good thing I haven't got that chance." 

"She said I should tell Keith," I said, after we'd walked on a bit. "She still thinks he cares about her. How do we tell her he was one of the people who set up the accident?" 

"She'll have to know some time," Zoë said. "When she's stronger. I'll make a note to come back and visit her again." 

"You don't have to do that." 

"If I'd never come here, she wouldn't be lying there now. I've got to do what I can for her." 

We walked back to the T-Mat in uneasy silence.


	16. Summation

> _It never penetrated earlier, but once it was over and I could... well... look at the answers in the back of the book, the problem became simple._
> 
> — Isaac Asimov,  Foundation and Empire

Punctually at nine, we arrived at Colonel Stanley's office. The setup was just the same as when we'd been given our original instructions, a few days ago. The only difference was that on the desk lay the two skulls, each in a securely sealed transparent cube. 

"Ladies," the Colonel said. "My congratulations on a successfully concluded operation." 

"Can we ask questions?" I said. 

He nodded. "You can ask, at least." 

"Are those skulls really alien?" 

"We believe so. They exhibit characteristics common to lifeforms from the theorised Planet Five." 

"A planet that would have orbited between Mars and Jupiter," Zoë said, never one to pass up a chance of showing off her knowledge. "It would have shattered to form the present-day Asteroid Belt. I didn't know people had found actual fossils from it." 

"Such finds are, unsurprisingly, rare. But when they do show up, they tend to be dangerous." The Colonel tapped one of the boxes. "It's believed that Planet Five lifeforms had evolved a distributed intelligence. Structures in the skulls enabled communication based on quantum entanglement. These were birds. Imagine a flock of birds, all guided by a unified mind." 

"And that's how the coven could read my mind?" I asked. 

"That's why these fossils are dangerous. Human brains are similar enough, at the quantum level, that the skulls allow a degree of mind-to-mind communication." 

"A different degree from different skulls," Zoë said. "The mind control only really got going once they had the second skull." 

"We believe so. There's a theory that Planet Five creatures were of two kinds: roughly, masters and slaves. If so, the second skull is one of the superior, 'master' type." 

"Right." Zoë paused in thought for a moment. "So this all started when Sarah Ricker got hold of the first skull. She used it to read minds. That would be enough for people to treat her as a witch. And then something went wrong. Giles McConnell was mixed up in it somehow. How am I doing so far?" 

"Sounds reasonable," the Colonel said. "Carry on." 

"They said they found the skull in the cave," Zoë said. "So it must have been in there when the entrance collapsed. It stayed there until the cave was rediscovered. Maybe longer. 

"There had been people round here trying to get witchcraft going again ever since at least the 1930s. One of them found the skull and worked out what it could do. They took care not to draw attention to themselves... until the second skull showed up. With the ability to read minds, they discovered what the archaeologists had found. And of course they could steal any password or authentication code they wanted, so they downloaded the scans of the fossil, made their replica, and swapped it for the original." 

"And once they had the second skull, that's when the other thefts started," I said. 

"Exactly. Something small and local at first, like the rings. Then they started to get more and more confident. People started to notice." 

"And that," the Colonel said, "is where you came in." 

"Yes." Zoë gave him a not-particularly-friendly look. "We were bait, weren't we? You wanted to see if you could track the whole sequence from initial contact to the actual crime. Maybe even replicate the process." 

"That was one possible line of enquiry," the Colonel said flatly. 

"And the Grey Lady was another one?" I asked. 

"Let's say the portrait was an odd coincidence. I thought it was worth exploring." 

"So I suppose you were monitoring us the whole time," Zoë went on. "You had access to our luggage and you could plant whatever devices you liked in it. Because we didn't know about them, we couldn't disable them even if our minds were compromised. Anyway, the coven found out from Lily what we were here for and started to get worried. First, they set fire to the bookshop: I can only guess at why. Then they decided to use the rubidium batteries they'd just pinched as bombs." 

"They said that was to test you," I pointed out. 

Zoë tossed her head. "And you know what I said to them about that. So then the coven decided to deal with me in person, and see if I really was some legendary witch or not. That had to be done at their headquarters, not wherever they'd been interrogating Lily." 

"It was in someone's garden shed," I said. "I remember that now. Perhaps they couldn't fit all of them in there." 

"Or they wanted more privacy. If I'd actually been a witch there might have been bats and fireballs and things, and the neighbours would have noticed. So the coven arranged an accident for Moira so they could lure us away in the hopper. I presume you made sure no-one else found us, Colonel?" 

"When your hopper went down, emergency services responded as usual," the Colonel said. "We monitored the situation. Since you were not found with the remains of the hopper, you had obviously either left it voluntarily or been kidnapped. We were able to track you by means of the flight recorder you were carrying." 

"It's got a locator beacon," Zoë said. "So you warned all the other rescue services not to follow it?" 

"Quite right. We didn't know what the situation was. In the fog, we had practically no useful imagery, but from the beacon signal we could determine your likely direction: the Chasehope power plant. I sent a platoon of troops there, with surveillance equipment. They landed some distance away and approached under cover of the fog. Using remote scouting robots they established that some members of the coven were already present. In the dark and the fog, it was straightforward to get a good spread of surveillance coverage." 

"Does that mean you had a camera in the dome?" Zoë asked eagerly. 

"We did. As Constable Selby correctly pointed out, the dome blocks radio signals. What she did not consider was the possibility of a scouting robot laying an optical cable through a ventilation duct." 

"So all the time we were in that dome, you were watching?" I asked. 

"And you know what happened when we were unconscious?" Zoë added. 

The Colonel nodded. "We were monitoring you. If we had had grounds to think a physical attack on you was imminent, I would have sent the soldiers in." 

"The coven might have taken their minds over," Zoë said. 

"They'd have had to be quick about it. A blaster shot doesn't have a mind to take over. But you're right, it was a risk. Sometimes risks have to be taken." 

"You said you'd move in if we were in physical danger," I said. "But not when they were trying to control our minds?" 

"Try to keep up, Lily," Zoë said patiently. "He was going to let that happen, and try and work out how they did it." 

"But wouldn't it be a risk letting us go loose with subconscious instructions to ransack a missile base or something?" 

"Well, it wouldn't be much of a danger," Zoë said. "The coven relied on people not knowing who their agents were. The Colonel would have known we were controlled and he'd have made sure we didn't do any harm. Maybe by shooting us, of course." 

"I'd have been sorry to do that," the Colonel said, unruffled. 

"So what happened in the dome?" I asked. I realised how impatient I'd sounded, and tried to calm down a bit. "You said you had a recording. Can we see it?" 

He tapped the table. "Here it is." 

We watched intently as the recording played. 

_The circle closes in around us. Constable Selby leans forward, and begins to speak. "Zoë Heriot, your mind is —"_

_And then her eyes lock with Zoë's, and she breaks off. For a moment she seems unsure of herself, and starts again. "Zoë Heriot, your—"_

_Their eyes meet again. The image isn't the best quality and the camera angle's awkward, but even so, I can tell there's something **wrong** about Zoë's face, almost as if she's paralysed or having some kind of fit. It seems to affect Constable Selby, because she loses her place in the ritual again. When she next speaks, all she says is "Who are you?"_

_Zoë doesn't answer, but she shakes her head, and gives her another glare. And Selby, and all the coven, crumple to the ground, just like that. The skulls fall out of her hands and roll a few centimetres across the concrete floor. Almost at once, Zoë's eyes close and she goes limp; if it wasn't for the ropes tying her to the pillar, she'd collapse completely. The same thing happens to me._

_And that's how matters stay until, a few seconds later, UNISYC soldiers and drones are flooding into the dome, hurrying towards us, and we raise our heads and look groggily around._

The recording ended. 

"But that doesn't explain anything!" I protested. "Why did they just keel over like that?" 

The Colonel shrugged. "I can't say. Doctor Heriot claimed the reptile people couldn't gain access to her mind. Possibly the same thing happened here, and the feedback knocked them out." 

"Why should it?" Zoë asked. 

"You'd have to ask someone who knows a lot more about Planet Five lifeforms than us." He paused, and cleared his throat. "Do you have any further questions?" 

"Can I speak to Keith?" I asked. 

The Colonel looked down at a screen. "At the moment we're still dealing with him and the other coven members," he said. "You don't mind waiting?" 

I shook my head mutely. It wasn't as if I had anything else I needed to do.


	17. Confessions

> _I've a grand memory for forgetting, David._
> 
> — Robert Louis Stevenson,  Kidnapped

"I wonder what 'dealing with' the coven members means?" Zoë said, lying back on her bed. We were back in the barracks unit that seemed to be our temporary quarters. "I hope they do a really deep psi-probe, with big sharp electrodes." 

"It's not like you to be so bloodthirsty," I said. 

"Well, it's not like me to get so hung up over another person. What they did to Moira still makes me feel wretched every time I think of it. And don't bother telling me she'll never care for me, I know that already. It doesn't change how I feel." 

Before I could make any answer, a soldier came in, saluted, and handed me a digitiser, similar to the one Zoë had used in the Heriotside archive. 

"What's that?" Zoë asked. 

"Message from the Colonel, ma'am. Says it was found in a search of Constable Selby's premises. Will there be anything else, ma'am?" 

Zoë still didn't seem very interested. "No, that's fine, thanks." 

The soldier saluted again, and marched out. 

"Is it anything interesting?" Zoë asked me. 

I peered at the first few words on the screen. "'This is the last testimony of Giles McConnell—' Zoë! This must be what Keith was talking about. What they found in the cave." 

Zoë sat up sharply. "Let's hear it, then." 

I began reading again. 

_"This is the last testimony of Giles McConnell, presbyter, of the village of Balcrynie._

_"For ten long years have I striven to rid my parish of the taint of idolatry and the works of the evil one. My most earnest prayers, my most fervent warnings of the consequences of sin, went unheeded, and for six of those years Satan's reign was nigh absolute. The lightest word of a witch held more weight than all the books of Holy Writ, and of the witches of Balcrynie the worst was Sarah Ricker. Often did she mock me, openly or by no more than the glance of an eye._

_"Four years past, as I walked beside the burn, I saw that the bank had slipped somewhat, and among the dark earth lay what I thought no more than a white stone. On a whim I clambered down and took it from the earth where it lay, and saw that it was no rock, but the skull of some bird, though of what kind I knew not._

_"I bore the skull back to the presbytery, meaning to consult my books and determine what kind of creature it might have been. And as I walked, I passed Billy Campbell. As he drew close, of a sudden I knew his secret thoughts, and the nest of vipers in his bosom was laid clear to me: He had come from the bed of another man's wife. He saw, I think, something in my face, for he mumbled some excuse and passed hastily on; and I came to the presbytery in a state of bewilderment._

_"It did not take me long to discover that it was the skull that held this power, and that when my hand was upon it no man's secrets were secret from me. I thanked the Lord that such an instrument as this had come into my hand, and no other: for who else but a minister should have such knowledge of the souls in his care? I resolved that I must put this power to use, for the good of the benighted people of Balcrynie. But I knew that were I to use it openly, I should surely be condemned as a witch myself. And at the word 'witch', of a sudden I bethought me of Sarah Ricker. Now she should laugh on the other side of her face._

_"The next time she passed me in the street, and smiled her mocking smile, I smiled in return, and took the skull in my hand. And at once her heart was open to me, and in it I sought out those secrets that would be most dangerous to her, should they ever be revealed. I need not set them down here, but it is enough to say they would have hanged her. Later that day, I visited her cottage, and set out my terms._

_"For four years, I have reformed Balcrynie, soul by soul. I would learn the secrets of every heart, and Sarah Ricker would be my tool in their salvation. Between fear of her, and my promises of deliverance, they were brought, however unwillingly, to the path of righteousness._

_"Thus it has been in Balcrynie. And thus it might have remained, had it not been that the Laird of Heriotside gave shelter, one winter's day, to a wandering physician, and a young lad and a maiden who were with him. Sarah and I — for by now the care of souls in the parish was our joint enterprise — determined that these three wanderers must be brought into the way of life we had established for the parish._

_"The Doctor, I think, must have guessed something of the power I had, or perhaps one of his young charges contrived to spy upon me and discovered how I pierced every veil of human deceit. He took pains to avoid me, but the boy and the girl were less wary, and I was able to open the locked doors of their hearts. Never had I seen depravity to compare with what I discovered there. Young and innocent as they appeared, they had engaged in the wildest, most appalling behaviour, and surrendered their bodies to unnatural lusts."_

"Probably meaning they'd held hands with someone with the light on," Zoë said. "The old hypocrite— Sorry, Lily, I didn't mean to interrupt. Go on, please." 

_"Still, they were young, I judged, and could be saved. I laid my plans, and presently suggested to the magistrate that the two should be arrested, and confined in a remote tower. It is needless to say that the magistrate agreed to my request. He knew what the consequences would be if he refused._

_"I made a visit to the young people the next day, to exhort them on the subject of repentance; and I took the skull with me, to judge how my words touched them. Their hearts remained hard and unrepentant, as I had feared. But I learned also that the Doctor knew of a cave, near the village, where Sarah from time to time would take the more unbiddable villagers, and where some worldly temptations I had confiscated from them were safely stowed. After sundown the Doctor planned to be at the cave. I knew that there he would find sufficient evidence to condemn me as a witch, and once it was in the hands of my enemies I was a lost man._

_"The moment I had left the prisoners, I made my own way to the cave, to remove the evidence before the Doctor should arrive. But the Doctor, I swiftly learned, had had no scruple in including his own companions in the web of deception he had woven. When I reached the cave, he was waiting for me. And there, too, was Sarah Ricker._

_"I shall not repeat the vile accusations the Doctor made against me — of spying, blackmail, intimidation, and sundry other crimes. My actions, necessary to spur my parishoners onto the narrow path of salvation, were to him no more than tyranny. He ordered me to give up the skull, as if I had no more right to it than a Sabbath-breaking apprentice had to his football._

_"We were standing in the tunnel that led to the cave as he gave his ultimatum: he on the highest step, with Sarah below him, I a few paces further down. He must have known, or guessed, that only when I was close beside somebody could I see into their mind. Though I could not see his thoughts, Sarah's were plain. She had been my unwilling servant for four years; now she had a chance at revenge. Her black heart burned with hatred for me._

_"I refused outright to surrender to the Doctor. He shook his head, sadly._

_"'You've caused nothing but fear and misery with that skull,' he said. 'It's not something that belongs to this world. I can't allow you to keep it.'_

_"I knew then that he would stop at nothing to rob me of the skull and destroy me. That if I allowed him to leave, he would either impeach me before the General Assembly, or simply murder me and take the skull by force. There was no other choice for me but to act, and act first._

_"There was a heavy bronze crucifix on a ledge in the cave, a Popish extravagance I had compelled Maggie Ferguson to give up to me. I ran to the ledge, snatched up the cross, and ran back with it. In the darkness he could not have seen what I was doing, but Sarah must have guessed. As I swung the crucifix, she caught my arm, and with her free hand struck out at me with a stick. I shook her off, and she fell back against a timber that braced the roof of the passageway, dislodging it. Before I could do any more, the roof of the tunnel collapsed onto us, even as the temple did upon Samson, and for a while I knew no more._

_"When I awoke, I found myself trapped under the rocks. My legs are crushed. I cannot move, and I know my death is near. Whether Sarah Ricker or the Doctor escaped, or lie buried beneath the rocks, I know not. My life ebbs away, and I can do nothing, save write these last lines._

_"To him who finds my bones and reads this last message: Take the skull which lies under my hand. Use its power for righteous ends. And do not overreach yourself, lest you like me fall prey to the jealousy of wicked men._

_"Giles McConnell."_

"Well!" Zoë said, once she'd had time to digest that. "He was a nasty piece of work, wasn't he? And everyone thought he was the innocent victim. I knew there was more to that old story about Goody Ricker than meets the eye." 

"You knew?" 

"Guessed," Zoë hastily corrected herself. "It's a pity Selby and her minions didn't take any notice of the bit about overreaching themselves, isn't it?" 

"Maybe using those skulls is addictive," I suggested. "After a while you just come up with excuses to use them more and more." 

"That's a good point," Zoë said. "If those skulls came from predators, perhaps the more you use them the more you start thinking like a predator." Then she looked up at the sound of more heavy boots. "Hello?" 

A burly sergeant was standing in the doorway. "You wanted to speak to Keith Bell, ma'am?" 

"That's right," I said, jumping to my feet. 

"Do you mind if I come too?" Zoë asked. 

I had to think for a bit. I'd imagined it being just Keith and me — but on second thoughts, depending how the conversation went, I might be glad of a friend. 

"Not at all," I said. 

The sergeant led Zoë and me to another one of the domes. This one was empty except for a table, a few chairs, and various pieces of recording apparatus. The three of us took our seats on one side of the table, and after a short pause Keith was marched in and sat down on the other. He looked pale and washed-out, with shadowed eyes, but he managed to give me a rueful smile. Even with everything I'd learned about the coven, I still felt my heart softening. 

"These ladies have some questions for you," the sergeant said. "You'd do well to answer them truthfully." 

"I will," Keith said. He sounded worn-out, too. "I'm too tired to make up lies." 

I summoned up my courage, and put the question that had been nagging at me ever since I'd realised my mind had been controlled: "Did you use magic — or whatever you want to call it — to make me sleep with you?" 

Keith shook his head. "I didn't need to. Oh, I'd seen your mind, and I knew how you felt about me. You liked me well enough, and you're a bonny lass, Lily." 

I couldn't argue with any of that, but it didn't make me feel any better. "You used me." 

"And you wanted to use me." For a moment, some of the weariness left his voice. "Asking me all those sly questions to find out who was doing the stealing, as you'd call it. If you'd had the skull instead of us, you'd have used it on me without a second thought." 

"If I'd been the one with the skull then I wouldn't have been stealing things in the first place!" I snapped back, and paused to try and get my temper under control. 

"What actually happened at the bookshop?" I asked, once I was sure of myself again. "Who set fire to it?" 

"You did, Lily." Keith had the grace to look embarrassed. "We made you." 

I'd been half-expecting that, too. "Why?" 

"To be sure we had control over you. And we had a book we couldn't risk being found with. It was called _The Threefold Sword_. There was something in it, some secret... I can't call to mind what it was." 

"Was it that picture of the Grey Lady?" Zoë asked. 

Keith jumped slightly, as if he'd noticed her for the first time, and gave her a blank look. "Who?" 

"Never mind. You decided to destroy the book. Why not just throw it on a bonfire?" 

He shook his head. "Mary Selby said that would never do. What if some of it was left in the ashes, and they found out what book it was? People would ask why anyone would want to burn it. They'd find other copies, and get to the secret. No, she said, burn it in the bookshop. Make it look like something else had been taken. If any of the book was left, it'd be just one more occult book in the fire." 

"That's quite clever," Zoë said. "Now, there's one other point I'd like to clear up. The theft of the synthmatter. I presume Moira did it, under your control." 

"No, I took it." He took a deep breath. "When Mary found out about the second skull, she said I had to make a duplicate. She'd got hold of the scans, I just had to put them through the fabricator. I did it the same day, after work. Used most of a feedstock drum. I moved the others round so no-one would notice straightaway that one was missing. Then, after we got the second skull and I wasn't working there any more, we made Moira move the drums back so she'd be blamed for the theft. That's all." 

"All except having her run over. Just so I'd try and get to her, and fall into your trap." Zoë's temper was obviously rising. "Well, she survived, but she's scarred for life. She's going to have to live with that every day. So will I. I hope you will, too." She turned to the sergeant. "We've finished with this person now." 

"Wait," Keith said. "Can I ask... who are you?" He was staring at Zoë with a puzzled expression. "I'm sure we've met before, but... it's as if I've forgotten something important." 

Zoë's face was rigidly controlled. "It's probably nothing," she said.


	18. Don't Have Nightmares

> _Ask of the Lesser, lest the Greater shal not wish to Answer, and shal commande more than you._
> 
> — H. P. Lovecraft,  The Case of Charles Dexter Ward

As far as UNISYC were concerned, the case ended there. The skulls disappeared into whatever vaults they keep dangerous artefacts in, the coven are serving their sentences, and the original copy of Giles McConnell's confession is safe in the Heriotside archives, with the Grey Lady's portrait to watch over it. Even under the heaviest psi-probes, none of the coven could remember what happened when they tried to take control of Zoë's mind. Like Keith, they couldn't even remember who Zoë was. 

Once Moira was out of hospital, Zoë went back to her and told her the truth — or as much of it as she could — about Keith. I wasn't present for that conversation, but apparently Moira took the news as well as could be expected. I don't think Zoë has seen her again since. 

There's one thing I haven't told UNISYC, though. 

Sometimes, at the dead of night, I wake from a recurring nightmare about what happened when we were in the dome. It's always the same. I'm tied to that pillar, bound and helpless. Constable Selby is there, but she must have one hand free, because she's reaching for Zoë. There's a scalpel in her hand. She cuts into Zoë's head and opens it up with no more fuss than peeling a satsuma. But inside, instead of a brain, there's just darkness, pitch-black, blotting out the dim light of the thermoglobe. The darkness comes boiling out of Zoë's head, until it fills the chamber. There are shapes in the darkness: banshees with shining white robes and black wings. They swoop down on the coven — I don't see what happens to them, but it sounds as if they're being cut apart with circular saws. Then one of the banshees comes towards me. It's got Zoë's face, with that same terrible, fixed expression, and it takes hold of my head with both hands, and begins to twist... 

That's where I tend to wake up, shivering. 

I mentioned the dream to Zoë once. We were sharing a tent, in the mountains above Kleine Scheidegg, and I'd woken to see her looking down at me, her face a pale blur in the dark. 

"Usually I'm the one waking us up with nightmares," she said. 

"Not this time," I answered, and told her what I'd dreamed. She didn't seem particularly interested. 

"Whatever you saw, I don't think 'banshees' can be the right word for them," was all she said. "Banshees come from Irish mythology. I think the Alban equivalent is a _bean nighe_." 

"A what?" 

"The literal Gaelic meaning is 'washer woman.'" I'd been sitting up to tell my tale; she pushed me down again, before I could ask her where she'd learned to speak Gaelic. "Go back to sleep, Lily." 

"But I've been thinking," I protested. 

"Again? Please don't tell me you're going to make a habit of it." 

"Zoë, this is serious." 

"All right. What have you been thinking?" 

"I think the Grey Lady must be real," I said. "When you saw the portrait, you fainted and couldn't remember seeing it. And when the coven tried to use the skull on you, they fainted and they couldn't remember who you are either. It's got to be part of the same thing." 

"That doesn't sound very rigorous, but go on." 

"Well. I think the... the spirit, I suppose, of the Grey Lady must still be in the portrait." 

Zoë made what I can only describe as a scoffing noise. 

"And part of her hopped into your mind," I went on doggedly. "And when the coven tried to take you over she saved you. And that's why you knew that rhyme about Goody Ricker. That was when the Grey Lady lived and she'd have known it. I know it sounds silly..." 

"Yes, it does." 

"But it's the only thing that makes sense. Whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." 

Zoë sighed. "All right. Now explain how I was able to recite the rhyme before I saw the portrait." 

"Oh." 

"Lily," Zoë said patiently, "You're my best friend, and I nearly always enjoy the things we do together. But I suggest that in future you leave the thinking to me. That was the most ludicrous theory I've ever heard."


	19. Prologue

> _The past, at least, is secure._
> 
> — Daniel Webster 

_At the first rattle of the key in the lock, Jamie and Zoë sprang to their feet, their faces set in worried expressions which gave way to smiles as the door swung open._

_"Doctor!" Jamie exclaimed._

_"Is it all right?" Zoë asked._

_"Are we free to go?" Jamie added._

_"Calm down, calm down." The Doctor pulled a large, spotted handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead. "Yes, I've secured your release."_

_"That's brilliant!" Jamie hugged the Doctor; a few seconds later, so did Zoë. "But what about yon fellow McConnell and his magic skull? You ought to be over in Balcrynie dealing with him."_

_"Don't you worry, Jamie. That's all been sorted out. Now, you two, come along with me — unless you'd like to spend another night in this tower, of course."_

_"No thank you," Jamie said firmly._

_Outside, the sun was barely above the horizon. Zoë looked up at the tower, with the watchman on duty silhouetted against the sunset._

_"We'll have to walk until we get to the road," the Doctor said. "The Laird sent his carriage, but it can't get all the way up to here. Still, we should be back at Heriotside before midnight."_

_"And what happens after that?" Zoë asked._

_"Well, we'll stay on until young Janet's finished your portrait, of course. But after that... I don't think there's any other reason for us to stay here."_

_"Will you miss it when we've gone, Jamie?" Zoë asked. "We are back in Scotland, after all."_

_"Not proper Scotland. Not the Highlands. The folks round here mostly fought for King George. Will fight, I mean."_

_"Oh, that's all right, then," Zoë said. "I didn't want to upset you."_

_"Upset me? How?"_

_"Well," Zoë said, surveying the sunlit glen stretching down into the distance before her, the cloud-capped hills, and the light reflecting off the rivers. "I wouldn't mind in the least if I never came here again."_

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Art for 'Klepsmnemon'](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4037497) by [stormbrite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stormbrite/pseuds/stormbrite)




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